Test Data - Food for Test Automation Framework at Selenium Conference 2016

[Updated - Pictures added, Video added]

I spoke about "Test Data - Food for your Test Automation Framework!" at Selenium Conference 2016 in Bangalore on 24th July 2016 in front of a packed and a very interactive audience. What a great time it was!

Here is some information about the session - 

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.

Teams already building 1000s of tests of various types - UI, web service-based, integration, unit, etc. is a proof of that.

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.

In this talk, we will focus on one of the critical aspects and patterns in building the Test Automation framework - Test Data!

We will look at different data patterns as options and techniques how to create, manage, use, reuse Test Data in a way to keep the tests running in an reliable and deterministic way. We will also discuss what questions to ask, what things to think about in selecting your approach for Test Data!

This discussion will be applicable for any type of Test Automation (web / mobile / desktop), but, we will focus primarily on UI automation frameworks, ex. using Selenium.

Slides

Test Data - Food for your Test Automation Framework from Anand Bagmar

Video

Pictures

Starting 2016 with vodQA in Pune - Agile Testing Workshop

Over the past few years, after having spoken in a lot of individuals & teams in conferences & organizations, I realized the understanding of Agile and what does it mean to do effective Testing on Agile projects / teams is very poor.

So, we at ThoughtWorks, Pune, as part of vodQA Pune - Agile Testing Workshop, start 2016 with the objective of connecting with our peers in the Software industry to discuss and understand - "What is Agile and what does it mean to Test on Agile projects / teams?"

We have planned and organized this vodQA conference in a very Lean and simple way - announcement, registrations, agenda and updates - all directly from our vodQA group in facebook.

This edition of vodQA will be held on Saturday, 9th January, 2016 at the ThoughtWorks, Pune office on the 4th floor. For more details, see the vodQA event page in facebook.

TTA in Discuss Agile Day Pune

I spoke in Discuss Agile Day, Pune on 22nd Nov on "To Deploy, or Not To Deploy - Decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis".

Below are the details of the talk:

Abstract

In a fast-moving environment, where Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are a necessity and not a luxury, how can teams decide if a product is ready to be deployed to the next environment and go 'live'?

What is the health of your product portfolio at any point in time?
Can you identify patterns over a period of time in making better decisions to better the quality of your product(s)?
Test Automation across all layers of the Test Pyramid enables to get quick feedback about the health of the product-under-test.

However, in an organization having multiple products in its portfolio, how can you get the collated quality / health information from all the products, quickly and in real-time? Or, for a large program of work, which has various projects being worked on in parallel by numerous teams across the world, how can the relevant people quickly get the consolidated quality / health information for the whole program?

In such cases, how can you:
- figure out any Trends / Patterns in the quality, or,
- do any meaningful Comparative Analysis (say between the quality of last release Vs the next release), or,
- do quick Failure Analysis and prioritize the 'fixing' of issues in an efficient fashion, and,
- do some quick Functional Performance Benchmarking.

At present this needs to be done manually.
Learn an effective way to answer the above questions - with TTA (Test Trend Analyzer), an open source product.

TTA give you real-time and visual insights into the health of the product portfolio using the Test Automation results. This allows teams to take decisions on the product deployment to the next level using actual data points, instead of 'gut-feel' based decisions.

Slides from the talk

To Deploy or Not-To-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis from Anand Bagmar

Some pictures from the conference

 

Good Trends for TTA in DevOps Summit

I spoke in DevOps Summit on 8th Oct in Bangalore on "To Deploy, or Not To Deploy - Decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis".

The conversations during and after this talk with various veterans in the Software Industry, across various different domains; reiterated my belief in the need for me to spend more time in taking TTA to the next level and make it a more robust and feature-rich product.

Below are the details of the talk:

Abstract

In a fast-moving environment, where Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) are a necessity and not a luxury, how can teams decide if a product is ready to be deployed to the next environment and go 'live'?

What is the health of your product portfolio at any point in time?
Can you identify patterns over a period of time in making better decisions to better the quality of your product(s)?
Test Automation across all layers of the Test Pyramid enables to get quick feedback about the health of the product-under-test.

However, in an organization having multiple products in its portfolio, how can you get the collated quality / health information from all the products, quickly and in real-time? Or, for a large program of work, which has various projects being worked on in parallel by numerous teams across the world, how can the relevant people quickly get the consolidated quality / health information for the whole program?

In such cases, how can you:
- figure out any Trends / Patterns in the quality, or,
- do any meaningful Comparative Analysis (say between the quality of last release Vs the next release), or,
- do quick Failure Analysis and prioritize the 'fixing' of issues in an efficient fashion, and,
- do some quick Functional Performance Benchmarking.

At present this needs to be done manually.
Learn an effective way to answer the above questions - with TTA (Test Trend Analyzer), an open source product.

TTA give you real-time and visual insights into the health of the product portfolio using the Test Automation results. This allows teams to take decisions on the product deployment to the next level using actual data points, instead of 'gut-feel' based decisions.

Slides from the talk

To Deploy or Not-To-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis from Anand Bagmar

Video from the talk

 

 

vodQA - Quest for Quality & Taste of Mobile in October

There are 2 vodQA editions coming your way in October 2015.

Quest for Quality - ThoughtWorks, Gurgaon - Saturday, 17th October, 2015

ThoughtWorks Gurgaon is happy to announce 8th edition of vodQA happening on 17th October, 2015 at TW Gurgaon office.

The theme for this edition is "Quest For Quality", i.e. anything and everything related to quality. The speaker registrations are now open, request you all to submit talks here.

 

Taste of Mobile - ThoughtWorks, Chennai - Saturday, 31st October, 2015

Welcoming speakers for the 6th edition of VodQA - Chennai. 

This edition of VodQa will give you the 'TASTE OF MOBILE'. We will discuss new practices and ideas in the field of mobile testing.
You could present your thoughts as a hands-on workshop, a short lightning talk (\~10 mins) or a detailed presentation (\~30 mins), submit your talks here.

Selenium Conference 2015 - it simply came, and went so fast

Its been a crazy summer - the 2nd week of September 2015 just amplified that…

A good few months ago we - the Selenium Conference Planning Committee started on the journey of planning this years Selenium Conference 2015. We started with debating where to have this years conference, till Portland magically came up on the radar, and became a reality. We met over Google Hangout every 2 weeks initially, and then as we got closer to the date, every week.

Can’t believe as I am writing this post, the conference is already over (a couple of weeks ago) …

The team put in a lot of hard work - me doing the least of that … and the turnout (approx 500 people), the interactions and the quality of talks proves the hard work paid dividends.

I traveled from Pune, India on 5th Sept at around 6pm headed to Portland, Oregon. The journey - from home to the hotel took approximately 35 hours.

After crazy 4 days, and a total of around 25-30 hours of sleep in 5 nights (thanks to the jet lag), and having delivered 3 talks as well, it was another 35 hour trip back home ... the only good thing after this hectic trip - I never got adjusted to the US time zone - which meant no jet-lag when I came back home :) This was a first for me :)

Slides & Videos from Selenium Conference 2015:

All the slides and videos for all the talks are available here.

Below is the list of my talks:

To Deploy or Not-to-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis

I got a lot of very good feedback for this talk, and also quite a few people expressed interest in trying it out! Looking for feedback from their experiences!


Video of the talk is available on YouTube here:

Slides are available here:

To Deploy or Not-To-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis from Anand Bagmar

Automate across Platform, OS, Technologies with TaaS

This topic is so relevant with anyone working in large enterprises, or when it is being "mandated" to work on a common test automation framework.

Video of the talk is available here:

Slides are available here:

Integration Testing in Enterprises using TaaS from Anand Bagmar

Say ‘No’ to (more) Selenium Tests

I paired with Bhumika on this talk. We were very agile in preparing for this talk - a day in advance to be precise. Also, it was very bold topic to have in a Selenium Conference - standing in front of 200+ Selenium enthusiasts, and telling them - do NOT write more Selenium tests. But went pretty well ... given that we were able to walk on our own feet out of the room, and that people were able to get the message we were trying to deliver :D

Video of the talk is available here:

Slides are available here:

Say NO To (More) Selenium Tests from Anand Bagmar

Patterns in Test Automation

I spoke in vodQA Hyderabad on Sat, 22nd August 2015 about Patterns in Test Automation - Frameworks, Data & Locators.

The slides are available on SlideShare:

Patterns in Test Automation from Anand Bagmar

The video is available on YouTube:

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
• Locators / IDs (for finding / interacting with elements in the browser / app)

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!

Learning outcome

• Patterns for building Test Automation Framework
• Patterns for Test Data Management, with pros and cons of each
• Patterns for managing locators / IDs for interaction with UI

Experiences from "Agile Testing" workshop

As mentioned in this post, I conducted an "Agile Testing" workshop on 24th July 2015.

Here are the slides from the workshop:

• What is Agile testing? - Learn what does it mean to Test on Agile Projects

What is Agile Testing? from Anand Bagmar

• Effective strategies for Distributed Testing - Learn practices that help bridge the Distributed Testing gap!

Strategies for Distributed Agile Testing from Anand Bagmar

• Test Automation in Agile Projects - Why? What? How? - Why is Test Automation important, and how do we implement a good, robust, scalable and maintainable Test Automation framework!

Test automation - What? Why? How? from Anand Bagmar

• Build the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) - Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) is an evolved way of thinking about Testing. It helps in identifying the 'correct' scenarios, in form of user journeys, to build a good and effective (manual & automation) regression suite that validates the Business Goals.

Build the "right" regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) from Anand Bagmar

Its all about Testing in vodQA Hyderabad

It's all about Testing! at vodQA Hyderabad is being scheduled for Sat, 22nd Aug 2015 at ThoughtWorks, Hyderabad.

Speaker registrations are now open and Attendee registrations will open soon.

I will be there, looking forward to seeing you there as well!

Automating Look & Feel, along with Functional validation

Typically we automate the validation of functionalities - using various options and approaches based on the Test Automation Pyramid. However, there are various reasons why one may want to automate the Look & Feel of their application (web / native)

This post is not about if or when we should automate the Look & Feel aspects of the product. This post assumes you have done the discussions, evaluations and validations required to reach the decision that, yes, we need to automate the Look & Feel of the product under test. 

The next question is - how? What are the alternatives of accomplishing this type of automation?

If you need basic validation, there is an open-source alternative - where you can do Visual Testing and Validations using PhantomCss. Vishnu & Shridhar spoke about this in vodQA Pune - Innovations in Testing. See the slides and videos from their awesome session.

If you need more flexibility and functionality from the Look & Feel automation, and want to do this for cross-browser / multiple devices, then I recommend you look at Applitools Eyes product. I had have seen a couple of demos from Moshe and Adam about this product - and they were kind to record one of the demos and allow me to share it with all - you can see the demo here on youtube.

Applitools has a free account for individuals, with of course, certain limitation in usage (not functionality). You can sign-up for your account here and try it out.

Enabling CD & TTA in Discuss Agile 2015

I had the opportunity to speak in Discuss Agile Delhi 2015 on 2 topics.

Here are the details on the same:

Enabling Continuous Delivery (CD) in Enterprises with Testing

Abstract:

The key objectives of any organization is to provide / derive value from the products / services they offer. To achieve this, they need to be able to deliver their offerings in the quickest time possible, and of good quality!

In such a fast moving environment, CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) are now a necessity and not a luxury!

There are various practices that organizations need to implement to enable CD. Changes in requirements (a reality in all projects) needs to be managed better. Along with this, processes and practices need to be tuned based on the team capability, skills and distribution.

Video:

Slides:

Enabling CD in Enterprises with Testing from Anand Bagmar

To Deploy, or Not to Deploy? Decide using Test Trend Analyzer (TTA)

Abstract:

The key objectives of organizations is to provide / derive value from the products / services they offer. To achieve this, they need to be able to deliver their offerings in the quickest time possible, and of good quality!

In order for these organizations to to understand the quality / health of their products at a quick glance, typically a team of people scramble to collate and collect the information manually needed to get a sense of quality about the products they support. All this is done manually.

So in the fast moving environment, where CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) are now a necessity and not a luxury, how can teams take decisions if the product is ready to be deployed to the next environment or not?

Test Automation across all layers of the Test Pyramid is one of the first building blocks to ensure the team gets quick feedback into the health of the product-under-test.

The next set of questions are:
    •    How can you collate this information in a meaningful fashion to determine - yes, my code is ready to be promoted from one environment to the next?
    •    How can you know if the product is ready to go 'live'?
    •    What is the health of you product portfolio at any point in time?
    •    Can you identify patterns and do quick analysis of the test results to help in root-cause-analysis for issues that have happened over a period of time in making better decisions to better the quality of your product(s)?

The current set of tools are limited and fail to give the holistic picture of quality and health, across the life-cycle of the products.

The solution - TTA - Test Trend Analyzer

TTA is an open source product that becomes the source of information to give you real-time and visual insights into the health of the product portfolio using the Test Automation results, in form of Trends, Comparative Analysis, Failure Analysis and Functional Performance Benchmarking. This allows teams to take decisions on the product deployment to the next level using actual data points, instead of 'gut-feel' based decisions.

Slides:

To Deploy or Not-To-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis from Anand Bagmar

vodQA Pune - Innovations in Testing

vodQA Update - Agenda + Slides + Videos

Here is an update of the vodQA that went by at supersonic speed!

We had an intense and action-packed vodQA in ThoughtWorks, Pune on Saturday, 6th June 2015 - with the theme - Innovations in Testing!

Here are some highlights from the event:

• You can find the details of the agenda + links to slides & videos from here or here.
• After a record breaking attendee registrations (~500), we frantically closed off registrations. This meant around 140-180 people would show up based on historic attendance trends. 135 attendees made it to vodQA - the first person reaching office at 8.30am - when the event was supposed to start at 10am! That is enthusiasm!
• We had 45+ speaker submissions (and we had to reject more submissions because the registrations had already closed). After speaking to all submitters, and a lot of dry-runs and feedback, we eventually selected 6 talks, 4 lightning talks, 4 workshops from this massive list.
• We were unfortunately able to select only 2 external speakers (but it was purely based on the content + relevance to the theme). One of these speakers travelled all the way from Ahmedabad to Pune on his own for delivering a Lightning Talk.
• We had a few ThoughtWorkers travelling from Bangalore (2 speakers + 1 attendee) and 1 (speaker) from Gurgaon
• We had around 30-40 ThoughtWorkers participating in the conference. 
• No event in the office can be possible without the amazing support from our Admin team + support staff!
• Overall - we had around 200 people in the office on a Saturday!
• For the first time, we did a live broadcasting of all the talks + lightning talks (NO workshops). This allowed people to connect with vodQA as it happened. Also - usually the last and most cumbersome thing from a post-event processing - uploading videos - was now the the first thing that was completed. See the videos here on youtube. This update got delayed because we still have to get the link to the slides :(
• We celebrated the 5th Birthday of vodQA!
• Even though most projects in TW Pune are running at 120+% delivery speed, we were able to pull this off amazingly well! This can only happen when individuals believe in what they are contributing towards. Thank you all!
• We wrapped up most of the post-event activities (office-cleanup, retro, post-vodQA dinner and now this update email) within 5 days of the vodQA day - another record by itself!
• Some pictures are attached with this email.

You can see the tweets and comments in the vodQA group on facebook. 

Again, A HUGE THANKS to ALL those who participated in any way!

On behalf of the vodQA team + all the volunteers!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[UPDATE]

Detail agenda, with expected learning and speaker information available here (http://vodqa-pune.weebly.com/agenda.html) for vodQA Pune - Innovations in Testing.

NOTE;
- Each workshop has limited # of seats.
- Registration for workshop will be done at the Attendee Registration Desk between 9am-10am on vodQA day.
- Registration will be on first-come-first choice basis.
- See each talk / workshop details (below) for pre-requisites, if any.


----------------

vodQA is back in ThoughtWorks, Pune on Saturday, 6th June 2015. This time the theme is - "Innovations in Testing".

We got a record number of submissions from wannabe speakers and HUGE number of attendee registrations. Selecting 12-14 talks from this list was no small task - but we had to take a lot of tough decisions.

The agenda is now published (see here - http://vodqa-pune.weebly.com/agenda.html) and we are looking forward to have a very rocking vodQA!

What is Agile Testing? How does Automation help?

I spoke in a conference recently on "What is Agile Testing? How does Automation help?"

Abstract

Agile Methodology is not new. Many organisations / teams have already adopted Agile way of Software Development or are in the enablement journey for the same. 

What does this mean for Testing? There is no doubt that the Testing approach and mindset also needs to change to be in tune with the Agile Development methodology. 

Learn what does it mean to Test on Agile Projects. Also, learn how Test Automation approach needs to change for the team to be successful!

Video

Slides

What is Agile Testing? How does Automation Help?

Here I am on the stage, in Main Hall, in front of 150+ people, delivering the talk - What is Agile Test? How does Automation Help?:

Role of Automation in Testing

I am speaking in Discuss Agile 2015 conference on 13-14 June 2015 on the following topics - 

1. To Deploy or Not-to-Deploy - decide using TTA's Trend & Failure Analysis
2. Enabling Continuous Delivery (CD) in Enterprises with Testing

As part of this conference, I also did an interview with Saket Bansal and Atulya Mishra on - The Role of Automation in Testing.

This was an interesting, virtual interview - where interested people had asked questions during registration, and also a lot of questions came up during the interview.

Below is the video recording of the interview. 

I also referenced some slides when speaking about some specific topics. Those can be seen below, or directly from slideshare.

vodQA Geek Night in ThoughtWorks, Hyderabad - Client-side Performance Testing Workshop

I am conducting a workshop on "Client-side Performance Testing" in vodQA Geek Night, ThoughtWorks, Hyderabad from 6.30pm-8pm IST on Thursday, 14th May, 2015.

Visit this page to register!

Abstract of the workshop:

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.

Venue:

ThoughtWorks Technologies (India) Pvt Ltd.
3rd Floor, Apurupa Silpi,
Beside H.P. Petrol Bunk (KFC Building),
Gachibowli,
Hyderabad - 500032, India 

e: info-in@thoughtworks.com 
t: +91 40 4388 4100

View map

Push the Envelope at vodQA, Bangalore

[UPDATED - Slides added]

Yet another vodQA begins today, Saturday, 25th April 2015 - this time at ThoughtWorks, Bangalore. The theme for this vodQA is - "Push the Envelope". The detail agenda can be found here.

I conducted a workshop on "Client-side Performance Testing" in vodQA Bangalore. 

Abstract of the workshop:

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.

Here are the slides used in the workshop:

Enabling CD & BDT in March 2015

I have been very busy off late .... and am enjoying it too! I am learning and doing a lot of interesting things in the Performance Testing / Engineering domain. I had no idea there are so many types of caching, and that there would be a need to do various different types of Monitoring for availability, client-side performance testing, Real User Monitoring, Server-side load testing and more ... it is a lot of fun being part of this aspect of Testing.

That said, I am equally excited about 2 talks coming up in the end-of-March 2015:

Enabling CD (Continuous Delivery) in Enterprises with Testing 

- at Agile India 2015, on Friday, 27th March 2015 in Bangalore.

Abstract

The key objectives of Organizations is to provide / derive value from the products / services they offer. To achieve this, they need to be able to deliver their offerings in the quickest time possible, and of good quality!
In such a fast moving environment, CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) are now a necessity and not a luxury!

There are various practices that Organizations and Enterprises need to implement to enable CD. Testing (automation) is one of the important practices that needs to be setup correctly for CD to be successful.

Testing in Organizations on the CD journey is tricky and requires a lot of discipline, rigor and hard work. In Enterprises, the Testing complexity and challenges increase exponentially.

In this session, I am sharing my vision of the Test Strategy required to make successful the journey of an Enterprise on the path of implementing CD.

Build the 'right' regression suite using Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) - a Workshop

- at vodQA Gurgaon, on Saturday, 28th March 2015 at ThoughtWorks, Gurgaon.

Abstract

Behavior Driven Testing (BDT) is a way of thinking. It helps in identifying the 'correct' scenarios, in form of user journeys, to build a good and effective (manual & automation) regression suite that validates the Business Goals. We will learn about BDT, do some hands-on exercises in form of workshops to understand the concept better, and also touch upon some potential tools that can be used.

Learning outcomes

• Understand Behavior Driven Testing (BDT)
• Learn how to build a good and valuable regression suite for the product under test
• Learn different style of identifying / writing your scenarios that will validate the expected Business Functionality
• Automating tests identified using BDT approach will automate your Business Functionality
• Advantages of identifying Regression tests using BDT approach