What I Did This Past Week 04 13 2018

Mo’ mabl

mabl_sm

mabl continues to impress me. As I have mentioned over the last few weeks, I have used it in a limited capacity (e.g. crawling web site, looking for broken links) but it what it offers is promising. I have a call scheduled with mabl this week, to find out more, so I’m excited to know what it offers beyond what I know and whether it will be something that I continue to use long term.

BDD Testing Skills Webinar

Test Rail

The BDD Testing Skills Webinar sponsored by TestRail is one I recommend if you are not familiar with BDD and would like to know more about it. Simon Knight with special guest Jeff Langr, who has a 35 year career in development and delivery of software. He’s also an author of 5 books as well as a contributor to “Clean Code – A Handbook of Agile Software Craftmanship by Robert C. Martin.” Most attendees on the webinar were not practicing BDD, so I felt right at home. 😊

Topics discussed during the hour long webinar, included the history of BDD, benefits, as well as pitfalls. It becomes really clear right from the start that Jeff has a LOT of experience, as he speaks from his own experiences as to what has and what hasn’t worked.

There was discussion towards the end about the test pyramid and Jeff stated that

“…the best tests that we can write for a BDD process….is Acceptance tests…They describe features so that a customer can understand them and hopefully hook into our system through an API.”

If interested in viewing, you can do so at https://youtu.be/5JdIb00qX0A

Locators

This week I began adding in my locators. I started with one page and once completed, I will be following the same processes outlined for our developers, when they are pushing their code up. It’s been an interesting and very enlightening process, that I ended up writing up an internal document for, to be used as a process going forward, for anyone else that may have to do this.

Determining What Goes into the Toolbox

think 2

Over the months, I have been spending some of my time evaluating, through a proof of concept on tools both for purchase and open source. When doing this, you want to make sure that what you are committing to regarding your tools, works for you and your organization. The things that are important to me in regard of tools are:

  • What operating systems are supported by the tool
  • Integration with other testing and development tools
  • That customer support is responsive in a timely manner
  • Product is well documented, accessible and that documentation is updated as the tool matures
  • Knowing which organizations use said tool, so that I have an opportunity to find out from said organization, how the tool is working for them

I have narrowed my choices and will be revealing in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

 

Published by Mike Clark

I’m born and raised in Seattle and originally worked in the music biz. I worked as a mobile DJ, managed record stores, worked at record labels, wrote for a hip hop magazine, and co-hosted a radio show. I got into the IT business in 1996 and became a tester in 2001. Since 2001, I’ve held positions as Tester, QA Lead, QA Manager, and more recently QA Engineering Manager, which is why I created this blog. In my free time, I volunteer time to raise awareness and funds for the cure of lung cancer, as four of my family members have perished from this disease.

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