There are not many constants in the world, but one of them is that the Ministry of Testing will always be experimenting with new content and conference formats, and it was no different at this year's Test.bash();.
Challenges
This year we focused the conference on four automation-based challenges. Side note, Challenges are a new addition to the Ministry of Testing website. These are short focused challenges to help you guide and focus your learning. You can also share your solutions with the community to help others on their learning journeys.
The four challenges this year were:
- UI Automation Challenge
- API Automation Challenge
- Visual Automation Challenge
- Data Management Challenge
In total we received 42 solutions to the challenges, covering a plethora of tools. LambaTest, Functionize, Cypress, Playwright, Nightwatch.js, ACCELQ, SpecFlow, Selenium, Puppeteer, K6, TestRigor, TestProject, DevTools, mabl, Postman, RestJar, Pact, Insomnia, Allure, RestAssured, CucumberJS, Supertest, Applitools, Percy, TestResults.io, SQLServer, Gretel.ai and Mockaroo.
We also saw the following programming languages C#, Java, JavaScript, Python and Ruby.
Now the unique thing about these challenges is they were focused on mitigating risk, as opposed to explicitly stating what you should be automating. This led to a huge amount of diversity in the way people solved these problems. From the tools and languages used, as mentioned above, but also to how the problem was interrupted. We see a lot of content in the testing community focused on how to use a tool, but in my opinion, not enough about how people design their tests to mitigate the risk they are targetting. These challenges and the fantastic experiences shared provided incredible insights into the thinking process required to automate well. Personally, I really enjoyed seeing how folks designed their assertions, and how they related to the interpretation of the challenge.
Overall, we are declaring this experiment a huge success. We built on past experiences and delivered something of huge value to the testing community. I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I did.
Talks
We also had five talks at the conference. We heard from Kylee Tilley who encouraged us to think beyond the tools, how to identify the right tool, understand them, build vs buy and make sure you have the right tool for the job.
Louise Gibbs posed the interesting question 'Who Tests the Tests?'. This a question they'd be pondering and took an interesting approach of utilising mutation testing to test their UI tests to answer it.
Jaswanth Manigundan shared how he'd implemented an API 'Test Solution' strategy across a scaling organisation. A challenging problem in a company of 200+ engineers across 25 teams. He breaks his approach down into three different areas: Functionality, Contract, Load & Performance.
Guru Kiran from Snapchat provided a deep dive into Visual Testing, how it started and where it's currently at. Plus how they are utilising the power of visual testing across their teams.
Nick Relkov shared a fascinating story on how he was able to utilise Postman to solve a complex data creation problem. He uses every single function of Postman in his solution and created an absolute masterpiece.
We also had a very insightful Ask Me Anything with Sonali Das on 'All Things Testing Tools'. As well as a great discussion panel on 'Managing Your Testing Toolbox' with Sarah Hutchins, Ibironke-Yekinni and Trisha Chetani.
Sponsors
One of the things that work well at Test.bash(); was that many of our sponsors also compleated the same challenges as the community. This provided a fantastic level playing field to evaluate a tool, and also gave us a rare glimpse at these tools in true action. We often see polished marketing videos, but on this occasion, we got to see the tool being used to solve a challenge we all understand and had preconceived ideas on how to solve it. I personally related to the tools a lot more in this framing than I'd previously done at any expo/conference. I'm looking forward to evolving this concept.
Functionize and LambdaTest took on the UI challenge, while mabl tackled the API challenge. We also had some bonus talks: Qase spoke about The Essence of Quality, QMetry provided a Product Demo and PractiTest shared how to manage all your QA in one place.
Watch the Videos
The videos are accessible by ticket holders and Pro Members. Ticket holders should have received an email with instructions on how to access the videos. Pro Members should just be able to watch as per all other content on the platform. We have also made some of the talks free.
With 15+ hours of content from this event alone, now is the time to Go Pro.
