Test Ideas Unite: Your Weekly Testing News - Issue 454

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It's Simon here with a roundup of what's been happening in the testing community. Let's go! 🧭

AI

When they couldn't find a tool to meet their prompt engineering needs, Robat Williams and Chris Price decided to create an Excel add-in that lets you use OpenAI models in Excel formulas.

Automation

With Butch as your guru, learn about the challenges and effective strategies in implementing Playwright, understand its role in enhancing product quality, and discover how it fosters team collaboration. Watch this AMA recording to deepen your understanding of Playwright.
Paul Grizzaffi shares a helpful food analogy to reflect on the tool choices we make for test automation.
Watch this partner webinar and gain insight into the workflow of automating test cases using Allure Testops, from transitioning tests into automated tests without manual API calls.

Books

The Club major contributor, Piotr Wicherski, is working on a new ebook. Available in Polish it's designed for software testers and those considering software testing as a career. It contains learning plans, stories of becoming a software tester, FAQs with the most popular questions answered and more.

Certifications

Early bird pricing for our MoT Certifications ends this month. Register before January 31st to receive 41% off! There are three distinct certification courses built on a solid, industry-informed curriculum that offers a flexible online format designed to enhance your learning experience and propel your career forward. Register for the MoT Certifications in Test Automation 🎓

Community

Rosie Sherry (new-old CEO at Ministry of Testing) shares the reasoning behind the ability to submit for four different types of exciting conference roles: The FAST approach for TestBash, our software testing conference
Q1's introductions thread is now live. Meet people who are new to the community and say hi. 👋
The Test Exchange is an opportunity to gather, get to know each other and explore ways of helping us all on our journey of advancing our software testing career. Join us on Thursday 25th January. The inaugural Test Exchange was a success so we're doing it again. Myself and Rosie Sherry are hosting and it's open to all, no matter where you're at in your testing career. 😃
Congrats to Hanan Rehman for getting their GitHub profile up and to Paulina Henderson for starting a new job. Who in the community recently did something cool, got a promotion or new job? How could you celebrate them?
Something new is coming to the community. It starts on the 29th of February. What a perfectly error-prone day that is. Watch this space. 🪐

Just for fun

Share a test idea in 5 words or less. The replies are brilliant! 👀

Listening

Check out this simple and handy tip from Mike Harris. It'll improve your listening skills.

Mobile Testing

“Mobile applications can be among the most difficult to test because of their reliance on background processes like location services. Enhancing testability is vital to the testing effort. Thanks to the Controllability, Observability, Decomposability, and Simplicity (CODS) model, we have a great framework to guide us on the journey to optimal testability.” – Ash Winter shares top tips in his article: Where Am I And Where Is My Test Data? Enhancing Testability Of Location Services.

New to Testing

I enjoyed what Filip Hric had to share about testing as an entry gate to IT. "If you want to become a great tester, then once you pass that entry gate, you shouldn’t just stop, because you already entered. You should ideally keep on learning."
There's something special about an origin story. It reminds us how we are both unique and connected. How did you get started in testing/QA? Read these stories and add yours.

Quality Reporting

Melissa Fisher provides a handy Quality Criteria coverage formula to report on things like security, compliance, performance and more. Melissa emphasises that it helps move the conversation from reporting on the percentage of testing complete towards a holistic quality narrative.

Strategy & Methodologies

"What if we asked ourselves: what's the smallest thing I can do to make things better? What small action can I take to improve the situation? Don't get me wrong. I know how much courage this takes. But I also know how much it benefits our self-worth." – Anne-Marie Charrett on agency is ours to keep.