Chris Harbert

qa

Hardest QA Fails of 2023

Get your schadenfreude on as we recap some of the biggest system and testing failures of 2023.

Testing AI/ML Classification Algorithms

In AI and machine learning, classification algorithms classify data into predefined categories or classes. Whether it's spam email detection, medical diagnosis, sentiment analysis, or any task where you want to categorize data, classification algorithms are at the heart of it. Two key metrics used to evaluate the performance

Testery Orchestration - What is it?

In AI and machine learning, classification algorithms classify data into predefined categories or classes. Whether it's spam email detection, medical diagnosis, sentiment analysis, or any task where you want to categorize data, classification algorithms are at the heart of it. Two key metrics used to evaluate the performance

Hiring for Test Orchestration

Test Writing is an important and non-trivial job. It involves selecting the right frameworks, implementing good design patterns for testing, and writing plenty of code. But in today's fast-paced, devops-driven software shops, simply writing the tests isn't enough. Getting the right tests to run at the

Who should write tests?

Before getting into who should write them, we need to talk about what kind of tests we're writing. The answer could be different when you're talking about unit tests vs end-to-end tests. Unit tests make sure that individual classes and methods are working as intended, and

What language should the tests be written in?

It's hard to answer this question without first asking, Who will be writing tests?, but once you've figured that out, here are some things to consider. If your goal is to get developers to participate in writing, executing, reviewing, or troubleshooting tests, it's usually

Should test code be in the same repository as app code?

One of the first questions we typically get when helping new clients is, "Should test code be in the same repository as app code?" And for good reason. There are definitely trade-offs. In general, the answer is "yes, unless you have a good reason not to"

What is Test Code Management?

It used to be the case that a lot of testing tools had no concept of versioning or code management. And when testers were only running tests in a single environment after a release was dev complete and deployed to QA, they could get away with it. The problem with

Assign Test Runs for Review

Who is reviewing your failed test runs? It would be naïve to think that tests never fail. In fact, if the system-under-test is changing and the test hasn't been updated yet, then you would actually hope and expect that it fails. It's a good practice to

Mocking Third Party Services

While extensive mocking is one of the hallmarks of good unit testing practices, it can sometimes be desirable to use mocking in our integration tests as well. Why? The systems our integration tests rely on might, * Create real-world consequences (e.g. bill a customer, send emails) * Perform slow running or

Selecting a Test Data Management Strategy

Like any good engineering problem, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to Test Data Management. Requirements matter. Constraints matter. And so, we find ourselves needing to do some thinking when trying to determine what the best strategy is for Test Data Management in our situation. Spoiler alert --- you will

test coverage

Measuring Behavioral Test Coverage with Google Analytics

Measuring behavioral test coverage is essential to understanding what paths have tests and what paths don't. If your marketing team thinks a path in the application is worth measuring, it's a really good sign it's worth having an automated test for.

parallel test execution

Parallel Test Execution Guide

Running your tests in parallel when building software is a necessity if you want high quality and fast feedback loops. It is required to attain continuous delivery in a timely manner.  Parallel test execution is a great way to reduce overall execution time making teams more efficient.  Just keep in

postman

Testery vs Postman

Testery vs Postman...what are the benefits of using Testery over Postman when it comes to API testing? First things first... What is Testery [https://testery.io]? Testery is a continuous testing platform that helps you run your fullstack tests across multiple frameworks and environments at scale (unlimited parallelization!).  It’

flaky tests

Eliminate Flaky Tests

The ultimate goal of test automation is to have quality and confidence in your application and deployments. But what happens when a test doesn’t pass consistently when the code didn’t change? It lowers confidence in the reliability of the test results. Tests that fail randomly like this are

automated testing

Best Practices to Writing Tests That Can Run in Parallel

This article will walk you through some of the best practices for parallel testing the experienced folks at Team Testery have learned (usually the hard way) in the last couple decades of getting large test suites to run at high levels of parallelization.

continuous testing

Stop Paying Your CI Tool To Run Tests

If you are paying for parallel builds/jobs for your continuous integration tool to run parallel test then you could cut your costs by 50% or more. Read on... Continuous Integration is a necessary part of the software development process. If you are writing code that needs built and deployed

cypress.io

5 Benefits of Running Cypress Tests on Testery

Cypress is a modern JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework that doesn't use Selenium. As with most testing frameworks, Cypress has its critics and super fans. Read an earlier blog post about the pros and cons of Cypress [https://testery.ghost.io/pros-and-cons-of-cypress/] if you'd like to get

automated testing

Gain Even More Control Over Your Automated Tests With Scheduled Test Runs and Testery Deployments

Running automated tests just got even easier with Scheduled Test Runs on the Testery platform.  You can now specify a schedule for any of your tests runs.  This makes running your automated tests more reliable and consistent. We also just released Testery Deployments.  This is WAAYYY cool...especially if you

application monitoring

Up Your Digital Transformation Game To Include Application Monitoring And Testing

This year has changed the game for most businesses in every industry in one way or another.  There has been an increasing pressure for digital transformations across the board with some industries getting hit harder than others. All companies by now should have some sort of digital transformation strategy. But

cypress.io

Pros and Cons of Cypress

What is Cypress? Cypress is a JavaScript-based end-to-end testing framework that doesn't use Selenium. It is built on top of Mocha and runs in the browser simplifying asynchronous testing. Mocha is a testing framework for JavaScript and tests should be written using Mocha’s BDD interface. Cypress can

cypress.io

Configure Tugboat to Run Cypress Tests on Testery

Using Tugboat [https://www.tugboat.qa/] and Testery [https://testery.io] is one of the coolest, easiest, and fastest ways to run your E2E Cypress tests on every PR. Follow these four steps and in about 10 minutes, you'll have Cypress tests running in parallel and showing up

cross browser testing

Is It Time to Just Say No To Cross Browser Testing?

Everyone is using the same browser anyway. According to StatCounter via Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers, Chrome and Safari have 85% of the market share, and are the only browsers with more than 5% share. That's right. All that work and expense

load testing

Load Testing Your Application When Moving From Self-Managed Infrastructure to Using Kubernetes in the Cloud (Case Study)

Most companies have moved or are in the process of moving at least part of their infrastructure to the cloud. This movement to the cloud has made it commonplace for things like continuous integration, automation, containerization, and continuous testing among other things. From working with customers on test automation and

continuous testing

Load Testing: An Important Part of Continuous Testing

Load testing is an important part of any continuous testing strategy. What is load testing?  Load testing helps monitor the system’s response time to anticipated activity under user load. It helps point out problems in the application and point out bottlenecks before they become problematic and cost your company