Quickly access 50 tips for software test engineers using automated methods. The tips point to practices that save time and increase the accuracy and reliability of automated test techniques. Techniques that play well during demos of testing tools often are not the optimal techniques to apply on a running project. This book highlights those differences, helping you apply techniques that are repeatable and callable in professionally run software development projects. Emphasis is placed on creating tests that, while automated, are easily adapted as the software under construction evolves toward its final form. Techniques in the book are arranged into five categories: scripting, testing, the environment, running and logging of tests, and reviewing of the results. Every automation engineer sooner or later will face similar issues to the ones covered in these categories, and you will benefit from the simple and clear answers provided in this book. While the focus of the book is on the use of automated tools, the tips are not specific to any one vendor solution. The tips cover general issues that are faced no matter the specific tool, and are broadly applicable, often even to manual testing efforts. What You'll Learn Employ best-practices in automated test design Write test scripts that will easily be understood by others Choose the proper environment for running automated tests Avoid techniques that demo well, but do not scale in practice Manage tests effectively, including testing of test scripts themselves Know when to go beyond automation to employ manual methods instead Who This Book Is For Software test engineers working with automated testing tools, and for developers working alongside testing teams to create software products. The book will aid test engineers, team leads, project managers, software testers, and developers in producing quality software more easily, and in less time.

Rely on this robust and thorough guide to build and maintain successful test automation. As the software industry shifts from traditional waterfall paradigms into more agile ones, test automation becomes a highly important tool that allows your development teams to deliver software at an ever-increasing pace without compromising quality. Even though it may seem trivial to automate the repetitive tester’s work, using test automation efficiently and properly is not trivial. Many test automation endeavors end up in the “graveyard” of software projects. There are many things that affect the value of test automation, and also its costs. This book aims to cover all of these aspects in great detail so you can make decisions to create the best test automation solution that will not only help your test automation project to succeed, but also allow the entire software project to thrive. One of the most important details that affects the success of the test automation is how easy it is to maintain the automated tests. Complete Guide to Test Automation provides a detailed hands-on guide for writing highly maintainable test code. What You’ll Learn Know the real value to be expected from test automation Discover the key traits that will make your test automation project succeed Be aware of the different considerations to take into account when planning automated tests vs. manual tests Determine who should implement the tests and the implications of this decision Architect the test project and fit it to the architecture of the tested application Design and implement highly reliable automated tests Begin gaining value from test automation earlier Integrate test automation into the business processes of the development teamLeverage test automation to improve your organization's performance and quality, even without formal authority Understand how different types of automated tests will fit into your testing strategy, including unit testing, load and performance testing, visual testing, and more Who This Book Is For Those involved with software development such as test automation leads, QA managers, test automation developers, and development managers. Some parts of the book assume hands-on experience in writing code in an object-oriented language (mainly C# or Java), although most of the content is also relevant for nonprogrammers.

2012 Jolt Award finalist! Pioneering the Future of Software Test Do you need to get it right, too? Then, learn from Google. Legendary testing expert James Whittaker, until recently a Google testing leader, and two top Google experts reveal exactly how Google tests software, offering brand-new best practices you can use even if you’re not quite Google’s size...yet! Breakthrough Techniques You Can Actually Use Discover 100% practical, amazingly scalable techniques for analyzing risk and planning tests...thinking like real users...implementing exploratory, black box, white box, and acceptance testing...getting usable feedback...tracking issues...choosing and creating tools...testing “Docs & Mocks,” interfaces, classes, modules, libraries, binaries, services, and infrastructure...reviewing code and refactoring...using test hooks, presubmit scripts, queues, continuous builds, and more. With these techniques, you can transform testing from a bottleneck into an accelerator–and make your whole organization more productive!

“This book fills a huge gap in our knowledge of software testing. It does an excellent job describing how test automation differs from other test activities, and clearly lays out what kind of skills and knowledge are needed to automate tests. The book is essential reading for students of testing and a bible for practitioners.” –Jeff Offutt, Professor of Software Engineering, George Mason University “This new book naturally expands upon its predecessor, Automated Software Testing, and is the perfect reference for software practitioners applying automated software testing to their development efforts. Mandatory reading for software testing professionals!” –Jeff Rashka, PMP, Coauthor of Automated Software Testing and Quality Web Systems Testing accounts for an increasingly large percentage of the time and cost of new software development. Using automated software testing (AST), developers and software testers can optimize the software testing lifecycle and thus reduce cost. As technologies and development grow increasingly complex, AST becomes even more indispensable. This book builds on some of the proven practices and the automated testing lifecycle methodology (ATLM) described in Automated Software Testing and provides a renewed practical, start-to-finish guide to implementing AST successfully. In Implementing Automated Software Testing, three leading experts explain AST in detail, systematically reviewing its components, capabilities, and limitations. Drawing on their experience deploying AST in both defense and commercial industry, they walk you through the entire implementation process–identifying best practices, crucial success factors, and key pitfalls along with solutions for avoiding them. You will learn how to: Make a realistic business case for AST, and use it to drive your initiative Clarify your testing requirements and develop an automation strategy that reflects them Build efficient test environments and choose the right automation tools and techniques for your environment Use proven metrics to continuously track your progress and adjust accordingly Whether you’re a test professional, QA specialist, project manager, or developer, this book can help you bring unprecedented efficiency to testing–and then use AST to improve your entire development lifecycle.

In this work, over 40 pioneering implementers share their experiences and best practices in 28 case studies. Drawing on their insights, you can avoid the pitfalls associated with test automation, and achieve powerful results on every metric you care about: quality, cost, time to market, usability, and value.

How to Find and Fix the Killer Software Bugs that Evade Conventional Testing In Exploratory Software Testing, renowned software testing expert James Whittaker reveals the real causes of today’s most serious, well-hidden software bugs--and introduces powerful new “exploratory” techniques for finding and correcting them. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience working at the cutting edge of testing with Google, Microsoft, and other top software organizations, Whittaker introduces innovative new processes for manual testing that are repeatable, prescriptive, teachable, and extremely effective. Whittaker defines both in-the-small techniques for individual testers and in-the-large techniques to supercharge test teams. He also introduces a hybrid strategy for injecting exploratory concepts into traditional scripted testing. You’ll learn when to use each, and how to use them all successfully. Concise, entertaining, and actionable, this book introduces robust techniques that have been used extensively by real testers on shipping software, illuminating their actual experiences with these techniques, and the results they’ve achieved. Writing for testers, QA specialists, developers, program managers, and architects alike, Whittaker answers crucial questions such as: • Why do some bugs remain invisible to automated testing--and how can I uncover them? • What techniques will help me consistently discover and eliminate “show stopper” bugs? • How do I make manual testing more effective--and less boring and unpleasant? • What’s the most effective high-level test strategy for each project? • Which inputs should I test when I can’t test them all? • Which test cases will provide the best feature coverage? • How can I get better results by combining exploratory testing with traditional script or scenario-based testing? • How do I reflect feedback from the development process, such as code changes?

"This book is an indispensable resource." - Greg Wright, Kainos Software Ltd. Radically improve your testing practice and software quality with new testing styles, good patterns, and reliable automation. Key Features A practical and results-driven approach to unit testing Refine your existing unit tests by implementing modern best practices Learn the four pillars of a good unit test Safely automate your testing process to save time and money Spot which tests need refactoring, and which need to be deleted entirely Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About The Book Great testing practices maximize your project quality and delivery speed by identifying bad code early in the development process. Wrong tests will break your code, multiply bugs, and increase time and costs. You owe it to yourself—and your projects—to learn how to do excellent unit testing. Unit Testing Principles, Patterns and Practices teaches you to design and write tests that target key areas of your code including the domain model. In this clearly written guide, you learn to develop professional-quality tests and test suites and integrate testing throughout the application life cycle. As you adopt a testing mindset, you’ll be amazed at how better tests cause you to write better code. What You Will Learn Universal guidelines to assess any unit test Testing to identify and avoid anti-patterns Refactoring tests along with the production code Using integration tests to verify the whole system This Book Is Written For For readers who know the basics of unit testing. Examples are written in C# and can easily be applied to any language. About the Author Vladimir Khorikov is an author, blogger, and Microsoft MVP. He has mentored numerous teams on the ins and outs of unit testing. Table of Contents: PART 1 THE BIGGER PICTURE 1 ¦ The goal of unit testing 2 ¦ What is a unit test? 3 ¦ The anatomy of a unit test PART 2 MAKING YOUR TESTS WORK FOR YOU 4 ¦ The four pillars of a good unit test 5 ¦ Mocks and test fragility 6 ¦ Styles of unit testing 7 ¦ Refactoring toward valuable unit tests PART 3 INTEGRATION TESTING 8 ¦ Why integration testing? 9 ¦ Mocking best practices 10 ¦ Testing the database PART 4 UNIT TESTING ANTI-PATTERNS 11 ¦ Unit testing anti-patterns