Speaking schedule in the past year, and crazy July 2023!

I am writing on my blog after a very long time ... Don't remember the last time I wrote a post. So what has happened in the past 6-12 months?

Thanks to the wonderful conference and meetup organizers, I have traveled a lot for the following:

• DevOps Days 2022 @Switzerland
• Meetup @New York
• Meetup @Boston
• Selenium Conf 2023 @Chicago,
• Meetup @Sydney,
• Testing Talks 2022, Melbourne
• StarEast 2023, Orlando

I also spoke at many meetups and events in Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai and Pune.

I also spoke in some very interesting webinars in this time. The ones that surprised me the most because of the huge popularity and turnouts were:

• Unlocking the Power of ChatGPT and AI in Testing: A Real-World Look
• Unlocking the Power of ChatGPT and AI in Test Automation: Next Steps

While doing this, I have been contributing to open-source - teswiz and AppiumTestDistribution are the big noteworthy items. Recent work has been to support Selenium WebDriver v4 and Appium 2.0 in these frameworks.

Now in July 2023, this is the scheduled lineup of events (with dates, location and topics):

• Saturday, 8 July 2023 - A modern look at AI-powered Cross Browser Testing at Game of Testing, Bangalore
• Thursday, 13th July 2023 - Can AI Autogenerate and Run Automated Tests? - An Applitools webinar.
• Monday, 17th July 2023 - Visual Validation - The missing tip of the automation pyramid & and A modern look at AI-powered Cross-Browser Testing at Gentrack Testing Meet Up, Auckland, NZ.
• Thursday, 20th July 2023 - Unlocking the Power of ChatGPT and AI in Testing & Test Automation, at the Software Test Automation Group (STAG) meetup, Melbourne, Australia.
• Monday, 24th July 2023 - Eradicate Flaky Tests and Automating the real-user scenarios across multi-apps, and multi-devices, at All Things Testing Brisbane, Australia.
• Wednesday, 26th July 2023 - Power your Automation using AI, at Testing Talks Sydney Australia.
• Thursday, 27th July 2023 - Metrics to measure the effectiveness of your engineering processes, practices, and implementation, at ITMA-Applitools event, Singapore.

Analytics - The Brain of the Software

An Analogy 

I am not a doctor, nor did I enjoy biology too much in my curriculum as a student.  However, I do know that the body has many organs and each organ plays a vital role in the well being of the individual.

Each organ has to:

• function correctly (movement, senses, core functions, etc.)

• has to perform as per expectations in different conditions the individual may be going through (walking, running, swimming, etc.)

• has to be secure from external parameters (heat, cold, rain, what we eat / drink, etc.)

• has to have a proper user experience (ex: if the human hands had webs like ducks, would we be able to hold a pen correctly to write?

• I would like to think of the brain as the super computer which keeps track of what is going on in the body, if each piece playing its part correctly, or not. And if there is something unexpected going on, then there are mechanisms of giving that feedback internally and externally so that course correction would be possible.

How does this relate to software?

Software is similar in some ways. For any software product to work, the following needs to be done:

Functionality works as expected

• The architecture, testability of the system will allow for various types of testing activities to be performed on the software to ensure everything works as expected
• Test Automation practices will give you quick feedback

There is a plethora of open-source and commercial tools in this space to help in this regard - the most popular open-source tools being Selenium and Appium.

Software is performant

• We can do performance testing at various different levels to ensure at different loads and conditions, the users will be able to use the product in a seamless fashion
• There are many tools to assist in Performance Testing - some popular ones being JMeter and Gatling.

Software is secure

• Building and testing for security is critical as you do not want user information to be leaked or manipulated and neither do you want to allow external forces to control / manipulate your product behaviour and control
• The Test Automation Pyramid hence also includes NFRs

User experience is validated, and consistent

• In the age of CD (Continuous Delivery & Continuous Deployment), you need to ensure your user experience across all your software delivery means (browsers, mobile-browsers, native apps for mobiles and tablets, etc.) is consistent and users do not face the brunt of UI / look-and-feel issues in the software at the cost of new features
• This is a relatively new domain - but there are already many tools to help in this spaces as well - the most popular one (in terms of integration, usage and features) being the AI-powered Applitools

Visual Validation is the new tip of the Test Automation Pyramid!

What is the brain of the software?

The above is all good, and known in various ways. But what is the "brain" of the software? How does one know if everything is working fine or not? Who will receive the feedback and how do we take corrective action on this?

Analytics is that piece in the Software product that functions as the brain. It keeps collecting data about each important piece of software, and provides feedback on the same.

I have come across some extreme examples of Business / Organizations who have all their eggs in one basket - in terms of

• understand their Consumers (engagement / usage / patterns / etc.),
• understand usage of product features, and,
• do all revenue-related book-keeping

This is all done purely on Analytics! Hence, to say “Business runs on Analytics, and it may be OK for some product / user features to not work correctly, but Analytics should always work” - is not a myth!

What this means is Analytics is more important now, than before.

Unfortunately, Analytics is not known much to the Software Dev + Test community. We know it very superficially - and do what is required to implement it and quickly test it out. But what is analytics? Why is it important? What is the impact of this not working well? Not many think about this.

I have been testing Analytics since 2010 ... and the kind of insights I have been able to get about the product have been huge! I have been able to contribute back to the team and help build better quality software as a result.

But I have to be honest - it is painful to test Analytics. And that is why I created an open-source framework - WAAT - to help automate some of this testing activities.

I also do workshops to help people learn more about Analytics, its importance, and how they can automate this as well.

In the workshop, I do not assume anything and approach is to discuss and learn by example and practice, the following

• How does Analytics works (for Web and Mobile)?
• Test Analytics manually in different ways
• Test Analytics via the final reports
• Why some Automation strategies will work, and some WILL NOT WORK (based on my experience)!
• We will see a demo of the Automation running for the same.
• Time permitting, we will setup running some Automation scripts on your machine to validate the same

Takeaways from the workshop

We will learn by practicing the following:

• What is Analytics?
• Techniques to test analytics manually.
• How to automate the validation of analytics, via a demo, and if time permits, run the automation from your machine as well.

Hope this post helps you understand the importance of Analytics and why you need to know more about it. Do reach out to me if you want to learn more about it.

Next upcoming Analytics workshop is in TestBash Australia 2019. Let me know if you would be interested in attending the same

Quality & Release Strategy for Native Android & iOS Apps at AppiumConf 2019

What an amazing time speaking at the first AppiumConf 2019 in Bangalore, India. I spoke about my experiences in setting "Quality & Release Strategy for Native Android & iOS Apps"

Abstract:
Experimentation and quick feedback is the key to success of any product, while of course ensuring a good quality product with new and better features is being shipped out at a decent / regular frequency to the users.

In this session, we will discuss how to enable experimentation, get quick feedback and reduce risk for the product by using a case study of a media / entertainment domain product, used by millions of users across 10+ countries - i.e. - we will discuss Testing Strategy and the Release process an Android & iOS Native app - that will help enable CI & CD.

To understand these techniques, we will quickly recap the challenges and quirks of testing Native Apps and how that is different than Web / Mobile Web Apps.

The majority of the discussion will focus on different techniques / practices related to Testing & Releases that can be established to achieve our goals, some of which are listed below:

• Functional Automation approach - identify and automate user scenarios, across supported regions
• Testing approach - what to test, when to test, how to test!
• Manual Sanity before release - and why it was important!
• Staged roll-outs via Google’s Play Store and Apple’s App Store
• Extensive monitoring of the release as users come on board, and comparing the key metrics (ex: consumer engagement) with prior releases
• Understanding Consumer Sentiments (Google’s Play Store / Apple’s App Store review comments, Social Media scans, Issues reported to / by Support, etc.)

Slides:

Quality & Release Strategy for Native Android & iOS Apps from Anand Bagmar

Testing in the Agile World

Thanks to ThoughtWorks, I was introduced to many things - 

• Agile
• Blogging
• Speaking at conferences
• Contributing to Open-source
• ...
• ...

The list is actually quite long - but that is not the intention of this post.

The main takeaway in my learning at ThoughtWorks though, is how to Test better, and be more effective in that for the end-user. 

Even before my time at ThoughtWorks, I never agreed with the thought process that Functional Automation can / should be done only when the feature is stable. But at ThoughtWorks, I did learn many more tips and tricks and techniques and processes how to do this Functional Automation in a better way, as the product is evolving.

On 9th April 2011, I had written a detailed blog post / article regarding how can we test better in the Agile world. 

This post was titled - "Agile QA Process", and the document was uploaded to slideshare with the name - "Agile QA Process". I am very pleasantly surprised that till date, that document has had over 74K views and almost 2.7K downloads, and is still my topmost viewed post on slideshare.

When I look back at the document, it still seems very relevant and applicable, to me! 

What do you think?

vodQA - The Saga Continues in Pune!

After a long break, vodQA returns to Pune. This time, ThoughtWorks & Vuclip are jointly hosting vodQA.

At vodQA, we have always strived to focus on the art and practice of Testing. This edition of vodQA is no different. Hence the theme for this vodQA - "The Saga Continues". 

We welcome all roles interested in the (Software) Quality to participate in this conference.

The event will be held on Sat, 29th July 2017 at Vuclip office in Pune. 

Agenda is as below:

Address:

1st Floor, 

Nanasaheb Gaikwad Information Technology Park, 

Sarjaa Rd, Aundh, Pune, Maharashtra 411007

Above Croma

Link to Map - https://goo.gl/maps/4yWaX6atutw

Patterns in Test Automation Framework at STPCon

I spoke about Patterns of a "good" Test Automation Framework at STPCon 2017. Here are the details from the talk.

Abstract

Building a Test Automation Framework is easy – there are so many resources / guides / blogs / etc. available to help you get started and help solve the issues you get along the journey.

However, building a “good” Test Automation Framework is not very easy. There are a lot of principles and practices you need to use, in the right context, with a good set of skills required to make the Test Automation Framework maintainable, scalable and reusable.

Design Patterns play a big role in helping achieve this goal of building a good and robust framework.

In this talk, we will talk about, and see examples of various types of patterns you can use for:

• Build your Test Automation Framework
• Test Data Management

Using these patterns you will be able to build a good framework, that will help keep your tests running fast, and reliably in your CI / CD setup!

Session Takeaways:

• Patterns for building Test Automation Framework.
• Patterns for Test Data Management, with pros and cons of each.

Slides

Patterns of a “good” test automation framework from Anand Bagmar

Pictures

Workshop - Client-Side Performance Testing at STPCon 2017

I conducted a 4-hour workshop on Client-Side Performance Testing at STPCon 2017 on 15th March 2017.

Workshop Abstract

In this workshop, we will see the different dimensions of Performance Testing and Performance Engineering, and focus on Client-side Performance Testing.

Before we get to doing some Client-side Performance Testing activities, we will first understand how to look at client-side performance, and putting that in the context of the product under test. We will see, using a case study, the impact of caching on performance, the good & the bad! We will then experiment with some tools like WebPageTest and Page Speed to understand how to measure client-side performance.

Lastly – just understanding the performance of the product is not sufficient. We will look at how to automate the testing for this activity – using WebPageTest (private instance setup), and experiment with yslow – as a low-cost, programmatic alternative to WebPageTest.

We will also look at the different dimensions of Client-side Performance Testing for native mobile applications.

PS: This workshop will be a combination of presentation and hands-on-activity with lots of discussion throughout. You should bring your laptop with you.

Workshop Takeaways:

• Understand difference between is Performance Testing and Performance Engineering.
• Hand’s on experience of some open-source tools to monitor, measure and automate Client-side Performance Testing.
• Examples / code walk-through of some ways to automate Client-side Performance Testing.

Slides

Client-Side Performance Testing from Anand Bagmar

Some pictures from the workshop 

(Thanks Mike Lyles, Curtis Stuehrenberg for the pictures)

Shared (relatively less) pain of using Protractor in SeConf London 2016

On 15th Nov 2016, I spoke in Selenium Conference London 2016 on the topic - "Sharing the 'pain' of using Protractor & WebDriver". This time, the pain was less - as I had already shared this in Selenium Conference India 2016. From that experience, and lot of interactions, I worked on some of the challenges I was facing and implemented good solutions for the same.

So this time it was easier.

The interesting challenge though was when the A/V stopped working after the 1st slide - and had to do on-the-spot improv to keep the ball rolling and prevent delays in subsequent talks. To know more about the fun I had, watch the video linked below :)

You will find the abstract, slides and video of the talk:

Abstract

There is a saying ..."Sukh baatne se badhta hai, dukh baatne se kam hota hai", translated as - "happiness increases & sadness reduces on sharing with others".

We want to take this opportunity to share with our experiences - the good and the bad, in the journey of building a Test Automation framework for an AngularJS based application.

We will learn, by a case study, what thought process we applied on the given context (product, team, skills, capabilities, long term vision) to come up with an appropriate Test Automation Strategy. This Test Automation strategy covered all aspects of Test Automation - Unit, Integration, UI - i.e. End-2-End tests (E2E).

Next, we will share how we went about narrowing-down, and eventually selecting a specific Tech Stack + Tools (Javascript / Jasmine / Protractor / Selenium-WebDriver) to accomplish the Test Automation for the product.
 
Lastly, we will share the challenges that came up in the implementation of the Test Automation, and how we overcame them. This will also include how we managed to get the tests running in Jenkins - a Continuous Integration tool.

This discussion is applicable to all team members who are working on Test Automation!

P.S. We will be attempting to make a sample protractor-based automation framework available on github for anyone to use as a starting point for setting up protractor-based Test Automation framework.

Slides

Sharing (less) Pain of using Protractor & WebDriver from Anand Bagmar

Video

https://youtu.be/YpEC3rFkH5

 

Slides from vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! now available

vodQA-Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! was held on on Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm at ThoughtWorks, Pune.

Agenda

Abstracts with Slides

1. Automating Web Analytics - Why? How?

Do you know –

• What is Web Analytics?How does Web Analytics work?
• Why is it important? How to test Web Analytics?
• How can we ensure correct data is sent to the Web Analytics server, every time, for all the actions?

Attend this workshop to learn ‘What is Web Analytics?’ and why it is an extremely important aspect of Software Development & Testing for your product / service to succeed!

We will share some techniques for testing Web Analytics - in a non-automated way - and why that is very challenging and error-prone.

We will learn, via hands-on activity, about WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework (https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/search/label/waat) - an open-source solution, to automate validation of correct information / tags being sent to the Web Analytic server for different user actions as part of your regular Selenium-WebDriver Test Automation Framework.

Lastly, we will see how the impact of Analytics has changed dramatically with more adoption and spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data, and what we need to do to be part of the change, if not influencers of change!

Slides: automating-web-analytics

2. Performance testing with Gatling for Beginners

Gatling is a server side performance testing tool. This workshop aims at giving introduction to Gatling and facilitating participants to write their first performance tests using Gatling.

• Brief intro to Gatling
• Using Postman to check stub server(created using mountebank for workshop)
• Write a sample test using gatling (pre set up machines are provided)

Slides: gatling-performance-workshop

3. Game of Test Automation

We are going to use a game to work out the WHY, WHAT and HOW of test automation within the context of consumers, application, skillset, mindset, etc.

4. Security Testing - Operation Vijay

It is now the days of the web. All businesses move their applications online for their customers to use.

Many of these applications contain critical data of the customers such as credit card details, their personal details and so on. These data are very valuable. If these data fall in the wrong hands, they can have disastrous consequences.

Attacks on these systems can destroy the trust that the customers have for the business, they can cause great losses to the customers as well as the business, and so on.

The motivation behind attacks could be different like earning money, earning popularity, destroying a competitor company, etc.

No matter what the intention of the attack is, we need to develop safe applications and we need to know the various vulnerabilities and the consequences of our decisions when we develop applications.

Similarly, we should be aware of the various vulnerabilities before we test the applications so that we can try and exploit it during the testing phase and ensure better quality and safer applications.

Slides: security-testing-operation-vijay

5. Automate your Mobile tests with Appium

• Introduction to Appium.
• Appium design for Android and iOS
• How to locate elements on android and iOS applications(Inspector).
• Hands-on code snippet for android and iOS(Wordpress as sample app)
• Generating reports (ExtentReports)
• Evolve code snippet written above into a Page Object Framework.
  

Slides: mobile-automation-using-appium

6. Increase Automation to REST

• What are web services and why we use them?
• How to test a web service in multiple ways?
• Increased familiarity with automation

Tools used : rest client, postman (mention alternatives), unirest JAVA and requests python

Slides: increase-automation-to-rest, api-webservice-setup-instructions

7. Let's cook Cucumber

In this workshop we will be covering:

• Advantages of BDD through cucumber example.
• Framework setup along with JAVA and Selenium.
• Writing one end to end test case in real world.
• If time permits - will be covering basic Refactoring
  

Slides: lets-cook-cucumber
 

8. Mobile Automation using Espresso

Imagine a situation where every commit spits out a build that can be deployed to production with confidence. In today's startup era, this can be a huge boost to business as it will reduce the time to market. UI Automation for mobile apps, be it native or hybrid, has been painful since long. But with mature frameworks coming up and Google/Apple realizing the importance of such tools, UI Automation is gaining traction in the mobile space. 

This talk is basically to understand what and why of espresso along with automating a simple scenario using espresso.

Slides: getting-high-on-espresso

Agile Testing & Patterns in Test Automation Framework coming to Singapore

I will be doing a 1-day workshop on Agile Testing and also a talk on "Patterns of a Good Test Automation Framework" as part of Unicom's World Conference Next Gen Testing Summit on Oct 13-14 2016 in Singapore.

See the site for more details, or contact me for more information on the same.

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action - Agenda, Abstract and workshop pre-requisites

vodQA-Pune - Less Talk, Only Action!

When? - Saturday, 27th Aug 2016, 8.30am - 5.30pm

Where? 

ThoughtWorks, Pune 
6th Floor, Binarius Building, 
Beside Sales Tax Office, Shastrinagar, Yerawada 
Pune, Maharashtra 411006 

Map: http://goo.gl/maps/KfuJG

What?

vodQA Pune - Less Talk, Only Action! 
- Registration - 8.30am- 9.15am
- Welcome note - 9.15am

Agenda

Abstracts

1. Automating Web Analytics - Why? How?

Do you know –

• What is Web Analytics?

• How does Web Analytics work?

• Why is it important? How to test Web Analytics?

• How can we ensure correct data is sent to the Web Analytics server, every time, for all the actions?

Attend this workshop to learn ‘What is Web Analytics?’ and why it is an extremely important aspect of Software Development & Testing for your product / service to succeed!

We will share some techniques for testing Web Analytics - in a non-automated way - and why that is very challenging and error-prone.

We will learn, via hands-on activity, about WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework (https://essenceoftesting.blogspot.com/search/label/waat) - an open-source solution, to automate validation of correct information / tags being sent to the Web Analytic server for different user actions as part of your regular Selenium-WebDriver Test Automation Framework.

Lastly, we will see how the impact of Analytics has changed dramatically with more adoption and spread of IoT (Internet of Things) and Big Data, and what we need to do to be part of the change, if not influencers of change!

Pre-Reqs:

• JDK 1.8
• IDE (Eclipse / IntelliJ Idea / etc.)
• Git
• Firefox browser compatible with Selenium v2.53.1 (v46)
• Also refer here for steps to run Appium tests using WAAT

2. Performance testing with Gatling for Beginners

Gatling is a server side performance testing tool. This workshop aims at giving introduction to Gatling and facilitating participants to write their first performance tests using Gatling.

> Brief intro to Gatling

> Using Postman to check stub server(created using mountebank for workshop)

> Write a sample test using gatling (pre set up machines are provided)

Pre-Reqs:

• Participants should know at least one programming language well (Gatling tests are written in Scala. But participants need not know Scala)
• Prior knowledge of what 'Performance testing is?' would help.

System requirements:

• Homebrew (Package Manager for Mac)
• Java 8
• Gradle
• Intellij IDE(Add Scala plug in)

3. Game of Test Automation

We are going to use a game to work out the WHY, WHAT and HOW of test automation within the context of consumers, application, skillset, mindset, etc.

Pre-Reqs: None

4. Security Testing - Operation Vijay

It is now the days of the web. All businesses move their applications online for their customers to use.

Many of these applications contain critical data of the customers such as credit card details, their personal details and so on. These data are very valuable. If these data fall in the wrong hands, they can have disastrous consequences.

Attacks on these systems can destroy the trust that the customers have for the business, they can cause great losses to the customers as well as the business, and so on.

The motivation behind attacks could be different like earning money, earning popularity, destroying a competitor company, etc.

No matter what the intention of the attack is, we need to develop safe applications and we need to know the various vulnerabilities and the consequences of our decisions when we develop applications.

Similarly, we should be aware of the various vulnerabilities before we test the applications so that we can try and exploit it during the testing phase and ensure better quality and safer applications.

Pre-Reqs:

• Java
• Modern Browser like Firefox/Chrome

5. Automate your Mobile tests with Appium

Introduction to Appium.

Appium design for Android and iOS

How to locate elements on android and iOS applications(Inspector).

Hands-on code snippet for android and iOS(Wordpress as sample app)

Generating reports (ExtentReports)

Evolve code snippet written above into a Page Object Framework.

Pre-Reqs:

• IntelliJ
• Java 1.8
• MAVEN
• Node
• Adb - android debug bridge
• Appium installed through node(npm install -g appium). Once the installation goes well. Hit command “appium” without quote and you should see Welcome message from appium.
• Download & install Virtual Box from here
• Download the basic version on Genymotion Android Emulator from here
• Make sure you chose the basic version which is free for use(Go to individual tab).
• You will be asked to create account with Genymotion before downloading the Genymotion package/installer
• Confirm your account by pressing the link sent to your registered email id
• Once you download, install Genymotion Android Emulator by following the instructions here
• Once you install, open/start Genymotion and click on Add(+) link to add a new virtual device and press Signin and login
• Select Android Version 6.0.0 and Device model Google Nexus 5 or 6. For more details follow the instruction mentioned here
• Select from available option, Press Next and wait till download finishes.
• Press start button & you should see emulator running.

6. Increase Automation to REST

What are web services and why we use them?

How to test a web service in multiple ways?

Increased familiarity with automation

Tools used : rest client, postman (mention alternatives), unirest JAVA and requests python

Pre-Reqs:

• IntelliJ
• MAVEN
• CHROME and POSTMAN

7. Let's cook Cucumber

In this workshop we will be covering:

• Advantages of BDD through cucumber example.
• Framework setup along with JAVA and Selenium.
• Writing one end to end test case in real world.
• If time permits - will be covering basic Refactoring

Pre-Reqs:

• IntelliJ
• Java 1.8
• Maven
• Firefox 46

8. Mobile Automation using Espresso

Pre-Reqs:

• Ensure you have Java 7 or beyond, installed on your box. If not you can download it from here 
• Download & install Virtual Box from here
• Download and install Android Studio from here. 
• Also kindly download the android command line tools from the above link.
• If you open android studio, it will ask you download & setup Android API and build tools which is useful for debug & compile our apps so please follow the steps. Ensure you have following things installed before you come for workshop and downloading it takes lot of time. 
  • Android SDK build-tools v23.0
  • Android API 5.0 or above
  • Install Android Support library from Extras. 
  • Please google in case of any issues while installing SDK
• Download the basic version on Genymotion Android Emulator from here
  • Make sure you chose the basic version which is free for use(Go to individual tab).
  • You will be asked to create account with Genymotion before downloading the Genymotion package/installer
  • Confirm your account by pressing the link sent to your registered email id
  • Once you download, install Genymotion Android Emulator by following the instructions here
  • Once you install, open/start Genymotion and click on Add(+) link to add a new virtual device and press Signin and login 
  • Select Android Version 6.0.0 and Device model Google Nexus 5 or 6. For more details follow the instruction mentioned here
  • Select from available option, Press Next and wait till download finishes.
  • Press start button & you should see emulator running.
  • You’re all set for the event.