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

Visual Validation - The Missing Tip of the Automation Pyramid at QuaNTA NXT at Globant

I spoke about Visual Validation - The Missing Tip of the Automation Pyramid at QuaNTA NXT event organised by Globant India Pvt. Ltd.

The event was very well organised and I had the opportunity to interact with a full house, and also later meet and talk with a lot of interesting people - curious about current state of testing, test automation and how AI can impact it in the future.

Agenda:

Below is the abstract of my talk:

The Test Automation Pyramid is not a new concept. While Automation helps validate functionality of your product, the look & feel / user-experience (UX) validation is still mostly manual.

With everyone wanting to be Agile, doing quick releases, this look & feel / UX validation becomes the bottleneck, and also is a very error-prone activity which causes brand, revenue and leads diluting your user-base.

In this session, we will explore why Automated Visual Validation is now essential in your Automation Strategy and also look at how an AI-powered tool - Applitools Eyes, can solve this problem.

Recording from the talk:

Some pictures:

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Collaboration - A Taboo!

In AgileIndia 2019 in Bangalore, as part of the Agile Mindset theme, I played a tweak of the Taboo game - to make it a Collaboration game.

Abstract: 

When one has fun at work, work becomes fun. However, daily pressures, metrics, KPIs, and what not, have dissolved the fun, and made work drudgery in various ways. 

This creates stress for individuals, in teams, and across teams, there is mistrust, unnecessary competition, blame, finger-pointing ….

What better way to learn, and re-learn the basics of life, work, team-work - than to play a game, have fun, and correlate it with how life and work indeed should be treated as a game, and we should have fun in this journey. Only then can people truly succeed, and so can organisations.

Here, we will play a game – “Collaboration - A Taboo!” – where you will 

• Re-learn collaboration techniques via a game! 
• Learning applicable for individuals and teams, in small or big organisations
• Re-live your childhood when playing this game

Be prepared for a twist which will leave you thinking!

Slides:

Collaboration - A Taboo! from Anand Bagmar



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Visual validation - The Missing Tip of the Automation Pyramid

At yet-another-vodQA at ThoughtWorks, this time in the Pune edition on 16th March 2019, I spoke about Visual validation - The Missing Tip of the Automation Pyramid

Abstract:

The Test Automation Pyramid is not a new concept. The top of the pyramid is our UI / end-2-end functional tests - which should cover the breadth of the product.

What the functional tests cannot capture though, is the aspects of UX validations that can only be seen and in some cases, captured by the human eye. This is where the new buzzwords of AI & ML can truly help.

In this session, we will explore why Visual Validation is an important cog in the wheel of Test Automation and also different tools and techniques that can help achieve this. We will also see a demo of Applitools Eyes - and how it can be a good option to close this gap in automation!

Slides are available from here

Visual Validation - The Missing Tip of the Automation Pyramid from Anand Bagmar

Video is available here:

Thanks to Priyank Shah for this pic!

I also received some awesome feedback for the same.

Thanks vodQA Team! Till next time, adios!

Talks and workshops in Agile India 2019

In the upcoming Agile India 2019 in Bangalore, I will be speaking about:

If you have not yet registered, you can use this code to get a discount on your registration - anand-10di$c-agile 

In addition, there are some great pre and post conference workshops as well. I will be participating in "Facilitating for Effective Collaboration...One Nudge at a Time" workshop - conducted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss and Ellen Grove. 

This is going to be one amazing conference to learn, network and share ideas and experiences. See you there!

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Test Automation in the World of AI and ML

My article on "Test Automation in the World of AI & ML" recently got published on InfoQ.


Here are the key takeaways mentioned in the article -

• There are many criteria to be considered before building framework / selecting tools for Functional Test Automation
• It is very important to prioritise framework / tools capabilities needed for the software-under-test
• A good, scalable Test Automation Framework that provides fast and reliable feedback to the team enables collaboration and CI/CD
• Debugging / RCA (root cause analysis) and support for libraries / tools used is an afterthought in most cases. Do not fall in that trap.
• There are some promising commercial tools that fit seamlessly in the Agile way of working. Depending on the complete context, these tools may be a good choice over building your own framework for Functional Automation.

You can read the full article from here. 

Looking forward to comments on the same!

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Recording from webinar on The Missing Feedback Loop now available

On 21st Nov, TestCraft.io hosted me in a webinar where I spoke about - "The Missing Feedback Loop - The Tools, Techniques, and Automation to Solve It". 

You can get the recording from here (https://hubs.ly/H0fBDN50).

A blog about my blog

With the risk of this ending up becoming a recursion, I want to share interesting statistics about my blog - essenceoftesting.blogspot.com and content shared on my SlideShare account.

• First blog: Future of Test Automation Tools & Infrastructure, published on 25th Aug 2010
• Number of blogs published: 218, not counting this one
• Number of viewers: 400K+

Here are some charts from Analytics of my SlideShare and blog:

Top content from my SlideShare:

• Agile QA Process - 75K+ views, 2.75K+ downloads
• Career Path of a Tester - 1.4K views, 50 downloads

Blog Overview:

Audience:

Popular posts:

• Career Path of a Tester!
• Introducing MAD LAB - for Mobile Automation
• WAAT - Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework
• Any WAAT (Web Analytics Automation Testing Framework) users out there?
• Taking Protractor to the next level
• Features of my Android Test Automation Framework

Referrers:

Update: Upcoming webinar - The Missing Feedback Loop

Please note that the webinar will be on 21st November. 

Register here (https://hubs.ly/H0fp4by0)

Is the Future of Test Automation I predicted already here?

Today, almost at the end of 2018, I have come across many tools focused on making Test Automation, easier, faster, reliable and more valuable to the teams & the product - like testim.io, testcraft.io, katalon, cypress.io, mabl, test.ai, etc. These tools are very interesting and very promising for the value proposition they are bringing to the table. 

As I reflect on these shiny new tools, my mind wanders back to 2009 / 2010 when I was toying with the idea of what would be next in Test Automation Tools & Infrastructure space. I had penned my thoughts and published an article on ThoughtWorks Insights with the title - "Future of Test Automation Tools & Infrastructure" (https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/future-test-automation-tools-infrastructure). 

If we look deeper in my post, the tools I mentioned above (and many others that I probably am unaware of), are conceptually on the lines of what I had sort-of thought in 2009 / 2010. They are using a very interesting blend of past experiences, in some cases advanced technology like AI & ML, in some cases leveraging cloud / SaaS model, and more importantly - pushing the boundaries to do things differently! I am personally very happy to see this happen.

That gets another set of questions in my mind now - if what I had thought of back then is now true, and a reality, then what is next? What will the next generation of new, interesting, shiny tools look like in the next 5 years?