Software Testing and Development Blog Posts

Abn Amro

On 11th September 2019 I was invited to present a Keynote and Tutorial at an internal Abn Amro conference for their Software Testers and Software Developers. There were a good mix of internal speakers and external speakers and additional invited speakers from Saucelabs.

I presented a talk on “Secret mysteries of automated execution” which described lessons learned and generic concepts about automating that I use to help me.

TLDR; LEAPWORK tool helps automate web applications and APIs using graphical building blocks instead of a programming language

TLDR; An example of modelling the application flow of a simple functionality. Modelling helps think through coverage and test ideas and think about what next for your testing.

I chose the very simple I Feel Lucky functionality on Google to use as an example application for modelling to support exploratory testing. I recorded the modelling session and explained my thought processes as I went.

I was asked a question over email, and I’m paraphrasing the essence as, “given our project issues what tool can we use to automatically pull out all this data and automate the app to let us test it properly?”.

Unfortunately most of the time, when I’m asked this, the answer isn’t what people want to hear.

TLDR; The formal api documentation specifications ecosystems have tools that can help create documentation more easily and use the documentation to automatically validate e.g. Dredd, Swagger and StopLight

I’m working on an API for The Pulper, and I want to write documentation in a formal spec and use tools to validate it. Sounds Easy.

TLDR; A simple link checker running from a snippet or console has some secondary advantages like jumping to the links and showing CSP and CORB errors

TLDR; AccelQ tool helps automate web applications and APIs using a DSL rather than programming language

I receive a lot of concerned emails and messages from testers. People concerned that their testing skills will not be enough to keep them in work and that the future revolves around automation which they don’t know how to do. No programming experience. And should they learn API or UI? What programming language should they learn? People do feel that their career is at risk.

And that’s what I cover in this podcast.

Testival Meetup 2019

I presented a talk on Automating Pragmatically.

Based on questions I am often asked about automating. I wanted to create a talk where I explained the models I use to help me understand automating and the approach I use for evaluating information about automating that I find online.

Logistics

• June 4th 2019

• Testival Meetup

• Event Page

The talk was recorded. I have uploaded it to Patreon, and the full talk with Q&A has been uploaded to Evil Tester Talks.

Updated and Refreshed in July 2026 - a list of tools I use for Work and Testing.