What have I been up to?

Happy New Year!

Like most of the world the last few years have been a learning and growing experience for me. First came the pandemic which changed how and where most of work, then came the learning how to work when and where. For myself, that transition was rather seamless, I work in software testing. As long as I have a computer, VPN access, and a stable internet connection, it’s not a problem. So, I started working from home on Friday, March 13, 2020; and work I did!

Since then, I have grown in my company and started do a lot of cool new things with testing and creating test scripts. I’ve become a fan of CodeceptJS and working from home has given opportunities that I didn’t have before as a father.

I have started reading books on modern day stoic philosophy and started playing with home automation. Both of which are topics that I’m going to start writing about here as I come back into blogging. My hope is that you will not only enjoy reading about them, but also learn something new along the way. These topics will be in addition to my conversations about software testing and management.

Additional Articles and How to Follow Me

Picture of Nicholas Keene
Picture of Nicholas Keene

I am active on a number of social media sites and writing platforms. This quick article will highlight a few of the additional articles I have written for other platforms and how to follow me on social media. That way you can stay current on what I’m working on and testing discussions.

Additional Articles

Over the past year, I have written a few articles on LinkedIn revolving testing and balance. I recommend taking a look at them if you like what I have written here. Below are links to articles I have written for LinkedIn, DZone.com, and Testlio’s company blog.

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Seeing the Test Case Through the Forest

"Tree shadows on moss" by Sven Schlager on Unsplash

It is easy to let your regression suite get out of hand. We tend to throw every test case we create in the regression suite. It is a test case dump yard for everything test we create that isn’t in the smoke test. We want to make sure everything works as expected before each release. When we do this long enough, we end up with thousands of test cases.

Before you know it, your regression suite is a forest, when you only need a few trees. There has to be a better way.

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The Key to Lasting Testing Success are in the Test Cases

Test Cases are the Key to testing success.

Test cases are the keystone of the QA house. Test cases document functionality of the applications we test, training material for new team members, and the building blocks of our test plans. With them we can demonstrate and clarify what we are testing during our regression and production test runs. Without them the following problems arise:  

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Failed Tests Are Better With Screenshots

Code on screen

When your test automation is running fine, everything is great with the universe!

Then it happens. A test cases fails and your trace isn’t entirely clear as to where it failed.  Even when the trace is clear, you still have to walk through the test steps to capture a screenshot for the bug. Imagine being able to capture screenshots at the moment of failure.  

Imagine no longer!

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