TestGuild Automation Podcast

The testing dead have risen, and they're hungry…consumed with an unnatural desire for bad automation practices to feast on. Your test automation efforts are crumbling, and they're coming for you next. What do you do? Matt Barbour, Senior Director of Engineering at Comcast Silicon Valley, shares with us some lessons learned about end-to-end testing from Zombieland. Listen up and discover how to escape the coming test automation zombie apocalypse.

Are you just starting off with Appium and not sure where to begin? Not sure which tool to use for your mobile testing automation efforts? In this episode, James covers the basics of how to get started with mobile testing using Appium.

Today we'll be test talking with Derick Baily, a software developer and founder of watchmecode.net , a community dedicated to learning JavaScript, Node.js RabbitMQ and more. He is also one of the co-hosts of my favorite podcast, Entreprogrammers. In this episode we'll discuss Testing Javascript and RabbitMQ applications from a developer's perspective, so if you're either a developer or a tester and need to get up to speed quickly with JavaScript, this episode is for you.

On today's show we'll be test talking about data strategies in testing with Paul Merrill, Principle Software Development Engineer in Test and Found at Beaufort Fairmont, a consulting company dedicated to ridding the world of bad code. Many of the testers I know have a testing or automation framework strategy, but most seem to overlook having a data strategy in place. It doesn't matter what automation framework you're using; if you haven't planned how you will manage the data your tests need in order to interact with the system(s) under test, you're in trouble. A data strategy is a combination of procedure and infrastructure that affects the way tests interact with data to simulate your systems under test. That's what today's show is all about. Check it out.

One of the top issues I find when trying to automate applications is how to test custom controls. I know I'm not the only one; one of my most popular posts is on what to do when UFT doesn't recognize an object. I believe one of the most overlooked solutions is to actually contact the custom control vendor to ask whether they have a solution to the problem.. In this episode we'll speak with Michael Germann from Infragistics about custom control automation using IG TestAutomation. Michael will share all kinds of tips for testing unrecognizable objects with UFT and RFT as well as general extensibility best practices for testing custom controls.

Today we'll be test talking with Paul Grossman, AKA the "Dark Arts Automation Engineer" about his five secrets of test automation. I've been following Paul for a long time on Linkedin, Facebook and other automation boards. He's always posting useful test automation tips and tricks to help out the testing and automation community, so it was great to finally speak with him -- and he did not disappoint. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode. Check it out!

I love open-source tools. Sometimes, however, a team might not have the skills needed to create a proper test automaton framework, or else the technology the team is working with doesn't lend itself to being a good fit for an open source test tool. I'm a big believer in teams using the right tool for their projects, even if it means the tool they select is a vendor tool. One vendor-based tool I've been hearing a lot of good things about is Ranorex. In this episode we'll be speaking with Roland Enzinger and Christoph Preschern about test automation for those who use Ranorex.

In this episode we'll Test Talk with one today's most well- respected testing authors and speakers, Lisa Crispin. Lisa shares with us some of her favorite Agile testing techniques, including how mob testing can help your team rub out bugs one defect at a time, as well as how your team can benefit from testing group hugs. Lisa's mission is to bring Agile joy to the software testing world and testing joy to the Agile development world, and I think it really comes through in this episode.

What better way is there to celebrate a milestone than speaking with a living legend? Gerald Weinberg has been developing and testing software for over 50 years, and was one of the engineers who worked on the first American NASA space program (Project Mercury), where he designed and implemented the space tracking network focusing on the first multi-programmed operating systems. Jerry has also written more than 30 books including some of my favorites: Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method, Perfect Software And Other Illusions About Testing, and Becoming a Technical Leader. You don't want to miss this episode – it'll be like listening to a real Obi Wan Kenobi … or Yoda!

In this episode we’ll be speaking with Neeraj Tripathi about his Principles of Software Quality Management. What I really like about this episode is that Neeraj has a ton of experience with software quality management and has worked across multiple organizations on many cross-functional teams. I think his breadth of knowledge really shines through in this episode. So if you’re having issues with software quality management, prepare to hear some knowledge bombs because Neeraj shares actionable advice for almost all the questions I asked of him.