Changing Gears: Manual & Automatic

My first week in, and I am being exposed to my team mates’ interests.

My cube mate has done some great things to make front-end automation tools available to all developers on the floor. Coming from the dev group myself, I know that this has been a coveted possibility for many years. Now it is just a matter of letting everyone know it exists, hand holding a bit on creating their own first scripts, and then watching as opportunities and future possibilities unfold :)

Another member of the testing team is investigating API testing. We’re collaborating to define a strategy. We’ve read this checklist for inspiration, and we’re being vigilant for aspects that could be checked with automation. An API seem like a natural fit for Functional checks, seeing as the longterm actor for it is another inhuman system. Lots of items from that checklist require human interaction and interpretation (especially in the Consumable category). I am unsure of how to test something like ease of use of an API that has hundred of end points and variations on each of those. Then again, I suppose the answer is in the question: if it is so large it has become daunting it might inherently not be easy to use…

Lots of thinking going on, and lots of passionate people. I look forward to the surprises next week may entail.