How to Test a Time Machine: The practical guide to automation and testing

Description

Rev up your career with powerful project enhancements using this comprehensive guide to test architectures and methodologies applicable to every area of testing Key Features Explore the full test architecture spectrum Discover a range of challenging automation applications with real-world scenarios Learn with easy-to-follow start-up examples including DevOps for testing, AI, XR, and cloud Book Description From simple websites to complex applications, delivering quality is crucial for achieving customer satisfaction. How to Test a Time Machine provides step-by-step explanations of essential concepts and practical examples to show you how you can leverage your company's test architecture from different points in the development life cycle. You'll begin by determining the most effective system for measuring and improving the delivery of quality applications for your company, and then learn about the test pyramid as you explore it in an innovative way. You'll also cover other testing topics, including cloud, AI, and VR for testing. Complete with techniques, patterns, tools, and exercises, this book will help you enhance your understanding of the testing process. Regardless of your current role within development, you can use this book as a guide to learn all about test architecture and automation and become an expert and advocate for quality assurance. By the end of this book, you'll be able to deliver high-quality applications by implementing the best practices and testing methodologies included in the book. What you will learn Identify quality maturity levels and processes to step up your product quality Develop the ability to think outside the box when testing methodologies Examine the various types of tests and their applications from an unconventional perspective Understand how to apply different technologies to the testing process Practice and polish your testing skills with practical code exercises Expedite your career growth with quality assurance Who this book is for This book is for test owners, developers, managers, manual QAs, SDETS, team leads, and systems engineers who wish to get started or improve the current QA systems. Test owners looking for inspiration and out-of-the-box solutions for challenging issues will also find this book useful. 1 Introduction – Finding YourQA Level Technical requirements Tips for absolute beginners Figuring out which quality assurance level your company has What development process is being followed? What coding language to use? What is the relationship between developers and testers? What is the size of the company? Questions about the development How to get to the next QA level in a company: Convincing upper management of the need to test Convincing other team members Getting a full framework up and running Identifying priorities, improvement areas, and skills Identifying improvement areas Building the right team – testing roles and skills Scaling Automating the automation Moving on Summary Further reading 2 The Secret Passages of the Test Pyramid – The Base of the Pyramid Technical requirements What is inside the base of the pyramid? Unit testing Other dimensions The secret passages How to cheat on unit testing to achieve coverage and why you should not Statement testing Edge testing Loop testing Branch testing Error testing Parameter testing Data providers Do not kill the mockingbird – how to level up your unit testing with mocking How does mocking affect TDD? The dangers of mocking Secret passage – automation at the base of the pyramid Summary Further reading 3 The Secret Passages of the Test Pyramid – the Middle of the Pyramid Technical requirements What is inside the middle of the pyramid? Integration testing Service testing API testing Contract testing System testing Understanding API, contract, and integration testing Testing APIs Contract testing Integration tests with APIs The secret passages – shadowing testing Shadow testing with an API Shadow testing without an API Static versus dynamic shadow testing The dangers of shadow testing What shadow testing looks like The other side of the middle of the pyramid – performance testing The performance... of what? Load testing Stress testing What should a performance test look like? Summary Further reading 4 The Secret Passages of the Test Pyramid – the Top of the Pyramid Technical requirements What is inside the top of the pyramid? End-to-end tests/user interface tests/frontend automation Other dimensions Secret passages The secret passages – making your UI tests more efficient with API calls Covering repetitive parts Playing with test data Alternatives to APIs The secret passages – headless testing The secret passages – remote execution The search for other tests Scaling your tests When to write each T in TDD Summary Further reading Part 2 – Changing the Status – Tips for Better Quality 5 Testing Automation Patterns Technical requirements The POM for UI automation Inheritance in the POM A PFM – an antipattern? Exploring a FOM Handling localization EPOM RPOM Putting it all together Automating the automation – a practical example Recognize automatable tasks Write some code that does that task for you Identifying when the code needs to be executed Identify success measures Dealing with dynamic object IDs Items with dynamic locators Angular/React dynamism Summary 6 Continuous Testing – CI/CD and Other DevOps Concepts You Should Know Technical requirements What is continuous testing? Continuous integration Continuous delivery Continuous deployment Continuous testing CI/CD and other DevOps concepts that you should know Pipelines Branches The difference between a branch and a pipeline step Secret variables Feature toggles/flags Load balancers Rolling Re-creating Rollback Metrics, alarms, and reports Types of continuous tests Unit tests/code review testing Integration tests/system tests/contract tests/API tests Build verification test E2E/UI tests Deployment testing Performance monitoring Tools for CI/CD Programming languages CI/CD tools Packaging tools Performance monitoring tools Version control systems Workflow applications A basic CT example 1. Running tests programmatically 2. Logging 3. Creating a YAML file 4. Executing the commands 5. Getting notified Summary Further reading 7 Mathematics and Algorithms in Testing Technical requirements Algorithms, mathematics, and testing Graph traversals Understanding the role of data science in testing Creating a dashboard Reviewing some techniques for test case analysis What should go in the BVTs? The early approach to AI – it’s all thanks to mathematics Identify repetitive tasks Write code that would do these tasks for you Identify when the code needs to be executed Identify success measures Summary Further reading Part 3Going to the Next Level – New Technologies and Inspiring Stories 8 Artificial Intelligence is the New Intelligence Technical requirements Is AI taking my job? Why learn about AI? Will automation take my job? Why should I learn about AI? Core concepts of AI Types of learning Data curation AI for testing Games Data analysis Test case creation and/or automation Grouping tests Automated visual testing Smart DOM finder Testing by voice Smart test balancer Optical character recognition (OCR) Test case analysis with machine learning Testing AI apps Types of AI apps Considerations about AI apps Sending your code to the Gym Other cool AI projects and tools Other tools for AI How to learn more about AI Summary Further reading 9 Having Your Head upin the Clouds Technical requirements What exactly is the cloud, and how can it help you? Creating a benchmark to measure testing performance Testing appropriately in the cloud Parallelizing tests Orchestrating tests Dangers of the cloud Considerations for creating your own device farm Using test cloud providers securely Testing applications in the cloud Thinking out of the box about the cloud When not to use the cloud... Summary Further reading 10 Traveling Across Realities Technical requirements Getting started with XR How to get experience in XR VR and testing VR development Testing in VR AR and testing Finding XR bugs and testing in XR Base layer Middle layer Top layer Other testing Testing with XR Quaternions and why they are important in XR Tools for XR development XR definitions Sumerian [5] Unity [8] Unreal [9] O3DE (Open 3D Engine) [10] Other applications Creating an XR application with Unity The camera Tools for XR testing Unit testing in Unity XR automation Unium [21] Airtest Poco [22] Hardware automation XR emulators The metaverse Summary Further reading 11 How to Test a Time Machine (and Other Hard-to-Test Applications) Technical requirements How to test a time machine By analogy Bottom-up Challenges in game testing Automating the impossible Automating for a higher purpose Record and playback tools Last-minute tips and best practices for your automation Architecting a system Summary Further reading 12 Taking Your Testing to the Next Level Technical requirements Challenging your career Finding hot topics Finding your style – horizontal versus vertical knowledge Finding time to work on that hot topic Quality growth Roles for testing Helping people in your team grow Transitions and career opportunities Impostor syndrome Closing thoughts Finding your why Ethics in testing The future of quality The future of you Summary Further reading Appendix – Self-Assessment Index Other Books You May Enjoy