TestGuild Automation Podcast

Do your test automation efforts leave you feeling depressed and bored, like Marvin the Robot in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy? Do you wonder what the meaning of test automation really is? Good news! In this episode we’ll be speaking with Mark Fink, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Test Automation, where he’ll reveal the answers to all your burning test automation questions.

This episode is a special treat, because we’ll be speaking with the actual HPE team that tested HPE’s new testing tool, LeanFT. Today we’ll be TestTalking with Hagay Avisar, the leader of HPE’s automation Center of Excellence, Ayelet Dasa a software engineer who focuses on test automation, Aviad Diamant the Lead for LeanFT’s Quality Team, and Malcolm Isaacs a senior researcher at HP. So get ready to get a behind-the-scenes, insiders look at how a functional test tool vendor goes about testing its own products.

Tired of getting crushed by bugs? Learn some testing Kung Fu to help you dominate any defect that comes your way. You need to be quick, and you need to recognize when something's not working. You need to be as Bruce Lee said "like water" so you can change your testing approach quickly. In this episode you’ll discover some new testing techniques to improve your testing efforts with David Greenlees, a black belt tester and author of the Software Testing as a Martial Art – There is no One Style.

Hi its Joe just wanted to quickly let you know that there is no TestTalks interview this week. I’m a deacon for a church and we have all our family over for Easter so I’ve been wicked busy preparing for Sunday festivities. But hey, don’t worry we’ll be back next week with an awesome interview with David Greenless about his new book Software Testing as a Martial Art . I also have interviews scheduled with Mark Fink author of the book The Hitchhikers Guide to Test Automation and an interview with HPE’s development team to learn about how they used their own tools for their testing efforts. And If you have an automation success story you’d like to share on an upcoming episode, let’s talk! Send your suggestions to:joe@testtalks.com So stay tuned and as always test everything and keep the good --Peace!

Managers and engineers can often get lulled into thinking automation is easy. After all, how hard can automation be? You record yourself interacting with the application, then play it back. Done. But how many of us have been burned by that type of thinking? I know I have. It’s up to us as automation engineers to educate the people around us about automation best practices and techniques if we are to have a prayer of surviving in this fast-paced, Agile DevOps world.In this episode Jim Hazen, a veteran of the software testing trenches, shares with us his years of experience in succeeding with test automation. Discover what it takes to implement automation and set realistic expectations for your teams, keeping in mind that it's automation, not automagic!

Have you ever had the feeling that you’re running too many tests? Or redundant tests that are causing you to spend too much time maintaining an ever-growing test suite of what seems like wasted test cases? Does your test suite take a long time to run when all you want to do is make sure a small change you made to a specific area in your application didn’t affect anything else? And did it leave you wondering what combination of test cases would give you the verification coverage you need?These are issues I struggle with, as well – which is why last year at HP Discover in London I was interested to learn about a model-based testing using a tool called Agile Designer. Ever since seeing a demo of the product done by Huw Price, I’ve been hoping to get him to appear on my podcast. I’m happy to announce that today, Huw shares with us his thoughts around model-based testing and test data management.

There have been many changes in the software testing industry in the last several years. Those of us who have been testers for a while know that testing is an actual professional craft; nevertheless, many folks coming out of college – and even some of our own developers – have no idea about testing techniques and tools.If you’re anything like me you’ve probably wished there was a way to keep up with and promote the ever-changing tools and techniques needed to succeed with testing.In this episode, you’ll discover how this is all about to change as we speak with Anna Royzman about her new organization, A Quality Leadership Institute. The mission of A Quality Leadership Institute is to become the world’s leading advocate for quality in technology. Anna has big plans for the organization, which include developing innovative programs on software testing quality and leadership for the tech community, as well as the promotion of software testing as a real discipline in colleges around the world.

Many test teams have undergone major changes over the past few years. With more and more companies moving towards Agile and DevOps best practices, companies are scrambling to understand how the role of testers fits into this new way of developing software. In this episode, Perze Ababa shares with us his experience in running a testing organization in the 21st century, and discusses the tools and techniques that can help anyone improve their testing efforts.

Are you sick of having to build yet another test automation framework from scratch? I think too many test engineers resort to building automation solutions from scratch without first investigating what other solution might be out there. Why reinvent the wheel? In this episode Pekka Klärck, the creator of the Robot Framework, talks about how it might be just what you’re looking for in an open source test automation framework.For those of you who don't know, the Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). It has easy-to-use tabular test data syntax, and utilizes the keyword-driven testing approach. Its testing capabilities can be extended by test libraries implemented either with Python or Java, and users can create new, higher-level keywords from existing ones using the same syntax that is used for creating test cases.

Paul covers many things in this episode, including hunting down elusive, intermittent issues that can cause your automaton to randomly fail due to actual product defects. You’ll also discover how to socially engineer your test automation efforts with empathy and conversations in order to build relationships that will help your automation thrive. This episode is chock-full of good test automation practices, so listen up!