Testtalks | Automation Awesomeness | Helping You Succeed With Test Automation

Is API testing at the top of your list of things to do this year? Not sure where to start? Or are you currently testing APIs but want to know more about mocking or service virtualization? In this episode Bas Dijkstra, founder of the blog ontestautomation and author of the book Service Virtualization: Implementation, Practices, and Trends for On-Demand Test Environments, shares with us some tips, tools and best practices around API testing.

One of the biggest challenges I see many automation engineers experiencing in 2017 is DevOps – and treating automation tests and infrastructure like code. A few of those technologies, like Jenkins, Docker and Vagrant are critical technologies you should know in order to excel in your career in the coming year. In this episode we’ll be speaking with Wes Higbee author of multiple Pluralsight courses including Getting Started with Jenkins 2, Docker on Windows and Intro to Vagrant. So if you want to expand your automation efforts beyond functional testing in 2017, you don’t want to miss this episode.  

Are you looking for an automation tool that allow your testers and developers to create automated tests fast? In this episode we’ll Test Talk with the creator of Sahi, Narayan Raman. Discover why Sahi open-source and pro might be the right tool for your team.

Happy New Year! Start your New Year’s test automation efforts off right by doing this one thing. Check it out!

Since I’m getting ready to put on my first online conference dedicated to automation, I thought it would be fun to hear about Google’s Test Automation Conference (GTAC) from one of its participants – Greg Paskal. Greg is no stranger to TestTalks. This is his 4th appearance, and he brings his awesome GTAC insight (and some lessons he’s learned) to another can’t-miss episode.

Have you ever wondered how companies like The Huffington Post and Twitter use test automation? Well then, you’re in for a treat with today’s episode as we test talk with Anil Kadimisetty about the tips and tricks he has used working at both companies as an automation architect. He’ll covers a range of topics including distributing load testing, visual validation testing, how to scale up automation teams and much more. Don’t miss this episode if you want to discover some of the real-world automation techniques that top companies use to succeed with test automation.

Today we’ll be test talking about Pester with Adam Bertram, author of multiple Pluralsight courses on PowerShell, and founder of AdamTheAutomator.com. I’m a big believer in the fact that infrastructure code -- just like test automation code -- should follow the same rigor as your application code. Pester is a unit testing framework that was built for people who want to take their PowerShell scripts and modules to whole different level, and really apply professional unit testing abilities to it. If your or your team is performing any type of PowerShell development, you won’t want to miss this episode.

On today’s show we’ll be Test Talking about keyword-based automation (also known as action-based testing) with Hans Buwalda, CTO of LogiGear and a pioneer in action-based methodologies of testing and automation. Hans will share how using action-based testing practices like modularization and keywords can make your tests easier to create, automate and maintain, as well as simpler to understand.

I don't think there’s a more popular topic in test automation nowadays than DevOps. While many folks I speak with have a process in place for most of their applications, one area some are struggling with is how to apply DevOps best practices to their mobile app initiatives.  That’s why I was happy to speak with Guy Arieli, CTO of Experitest -- a company that provides a bunch of cool quality assurance tools for mobile DevOps. If you’re involved with mobile development of any sort, you won’t want to miss this episode.

When you work for a large company, you sometimes need to expand your automation efforts beyond Selenium browser-based testing. What happens when you also need to create automation for applications like Embedded Systems, SaaS or ERP? In today’s episode you’ll discover how to automate embedded, SaaS and ERP systems, so prepare to learn some useful tips and best practices as we Test Talk with Ali Khalid, a test automation expert and enthusiast who has a ton of consulting experience working with all kinds of automation projects.

I’m excited to announce that registration for the Automation Guild Conference 2017 is now open! If you’re involved in test automation on any level, you won’t want to miss this one-of-a-kind, online event. Anyone who is familiar with test automation knows how difficult it is to create automated tests that are reliable and maintainable. Most automation project don’t succeed – but you can do better. Automation Guild will save you valuable time and headaches, because you’ll discover from some of the top automation engineers in the industry what works for their successful projects. In fact, the goal of the Automation Guild conference is to help YOU perfect the craft of creating automation awesomeness and accelerate your automation career. With over 25 speakers, many in-demand automation skills and topics will be covered, including Selenium, GitHub, Continuous Integration, DevOps, REST testing, visual validation testing and more. Whether you’re currently involved in automation or just beginning, we’ve got you cover

On this show we’ll address an extremely common problem most automation engineers have to deal with – running cross-browser tests. Meaghan Lewis a test automation engineer at Lever and a former employee at Thoughtworks (the folks that gave us Selenium). She’ll be giving us a sneak peek at her Selenium Conference presentation: Making Cross-Browser Tests Beautiful.

Communication skills are critical for succeeding in anything you do. This is especially true for folks that work in teams that are involved in the creating and testing of software. On today’s show we’ll test talk with Damian Synadinos about his presentation Workshop: Commutication – An Exploration of Idea Transfer with Words. Damian will share ways in which you can improve your communication skills and avoid the misunderstandings that may be preventing your team from creating automation awesomeness.

I’d like to make a big announcement! It was announced late last week that Selenium 3.0 has been officially released. This is huge. In this week’s episode, I’ll break down everything you need to know about Selenium 3, as well as give you a glimpse into Selenium’s future. After listening, you will know how Selenium 3 will impact your automation efforts, as well as some things to watch out for -- so don’t miss it!

Sure -- you might be working really hard, doing everything that is needed for testing your software, but is what you’re doing really the most efficient way to test? In this episode Melissa Tondi, head of SQE at ShopatHome.com (and one of the best-known thought leaders in the quality engineering space) breaks down the testing process and helps us identify areas that traditionally cause the highest number of inefficiencies within test teams. So listen in and hear what it takes to build a world-class testing organization.  

In this episode, we’ll be test talking with Dave Cadwallader, a senior engineering manager in automation infrastructure, about a fleet of proven, open-source test automation tools developed by WalmartLabs that can help you succeed with automation. Get ready to discover lessons learned about building and maintaining code and infrastructure that support massive- scale testing at Walmart, as well as tips for working with front end web development teams on making them successful.

Have you ever wondered how gaming companies test their video games? If so, this episode is for you. Amber Race, a senior test developer at Big Fish Games, gives us an insider’s peek at how she approaches game testing. Amber shares some of her favorite testing techniques and tools like Postman, which helps her to leverage APIs to automate many back-end testing activities. So if you ever wanted to know what it takes to become a tester at a gaming company you won’t want to miss this episode.

Metasploit is a cool open-source framework for conducting penetration tests. Not only does it help you conduct your tests, but it has a bunch of modules that can help you scan a target system looking for vulnerabilities. In this episode Keith Watson, author of the Introduction to Penetration Testing Using Metasploit Pluralsight course will give us a high-level overview of how to get started with Metasploit, as well as some best practices for penetration testing. Get your white hats on and listen up!

Are you looking for an awesome mobile grid solution like Sauce Labs, but don’t yet have a budget for this type of service? Although using an existing Cloud-based service is optimal, there are times when -- and reasons why -- having your own in-house mobile grid setup can be useful. In this episode Justin Ison, a senior software engineer at Microsoft, will walk us through the tools, best practices and pitfalls to avoid when setting up your own Selenium mobile grid. You’ll want to listen up, because Justin works on the popular and cool app Wunderlist -- a simple task management app that can be used across loads of devices -- so he knows how to get mobile automation done.

Feeling hungry? Have you ever binged on tacos? Do you remember how the first one tasted and thought it couldn’t get much better? But by the time you got to your third and fourth you may have started to tire of the tacos. (You’ll have to listen to this show to find out how this analogy translates to testing!) In this episode, Gregory Schmidt serves up some testing tamales in the form of optimum marginal utility as applied to test value that will help you take your testing “YUM” factor all the way to 100.