May 2015 Summaries

Leveraging QA teams to improve software delivery pipelines can help reduce delays and increase quality. By facilitating defect prevention and analysis, QA teams can drive the development process towards bug-free code, saving resources and time. This approach involves writing tests first, before coding, to ensure shared understanding of requirements and prevent bugs from entering the system. QA teams can also analyze trends in defects to identify areas that need more attention, making strategic decisions about resource allocation. By shifting the perception of QA from a bottleneck to a facilitator of success, teams can improve their pipeline and deliver high-quality products faster.

The adoption of continuous integration (CI) and DevOps practices is crucial for organizations to move beyond just faster releases and achieve a better understanding of their software development process. A deliberate approach to culture, processes, and tools is necessary to focus on results and attain them. By leveraging CI, teams can gain a holistic view of what's happening in the delivery pipeline, identify trends and patterns, and optimize their software delivery pipeline. This enables organizations to make data-driven decisions, report on benefits to stakeholders, and continuously improve their DevOps strategy. Effective use of tools and processes also helps to overcome common challenges such as bad communication and inefficient workflows.

Reducing False Positives in Automated Testing involves defining goals to determine which tests to automate, avoiding unstable areas and scenarios that are not supported by the automation tool. Well-written automated tests have a structured script, workflow, and tear down fixture, with no hardcoded data and handled exceptions. Regular peer code reviews can reduce false positives and should be performed by someone with a good understanding of the product and functional changes. False positives can occur due to code changes or changes in product functionality, and the test automation framework should be written in the same language as the application. Dynamic synchronization of objects waits for a specific amount of time for target elements to become available before executing an automation event. Test data setup can lead to false positives if it changes underlying scenarios, while using a known set of pre-existing data or dynamically creating data during run-time can help reduce inconsistencies and improve test stability. Moving setup methods out of test methods helps keep the setup uniform and allows for easier maintenance by fixing issues in one place. To reduce inconsistency when clicking on elements, wait until the element is fully rendered or animation is done before interacting with it, using dynamic waits instead of static waits.