What causes flaky tests and how to manage them

Flaky tests are non-deterministic tests that can be intermittently passing or failing, making test results unreliable. They can decrease developer productivity, increase diagnostics time, and lead to user dissatisfaction. Flaky tests can be caused by shared state resources between tests, unreliable third-party APIs, infrastructure issues, flaky UI tests, and poor test writing practices. To manage these causes, developers can use synchronization blocks, change the test to accept a wider range of behaviors, remove dependencies between tests, explicitly set static variables, use resource pools, and communicate with third-party providers. Additionally, monitoring test health, having short-term and long-term mitigation strategies in place, and using tools like Aviator TestDeck can help manage flaky test infrastructure better.