Issue #179 : Software Testing Notes

Are Your Quality Metrics Lying to You?

Hello there! 👋

Welcome to the 179th edition of Software Testing Notes, a weekly newsletter featuring must-read content on Software Testing. I hope this week has been good for you so far.

This week, we will explore:

• Think Like a User, Act Like a Tester: A QA Engineer’s Journey

• Mastering BDD with Cucumber and Java

• GraphQL API Testing automation with Mocha, Chai, and Node.js

• Turning Playwright Tests into Performance Audits

• Testing Methods: Sensory Characteristics

and more…

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✨ Featured

SmartFox AI: Smarter QA Starts with the Right Companion

Join us on July 23rd to meet SmartFox: PractiTest’s built-in AI companion that thinks like a QA pro. From spotting duplicates to generating tests from Jira and prioritizing execution by risk, SmartFox helps your team test smarter, without replacing your judgment. Join us for a live walkthrough!

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📚 Testing

Are Your Quality Metrics Lying to You? by Susanne A.

If your reporting dashboards are green but your users are frustrated, it’s time to stop measuring compliance and start measuring what makes your product truly great.

In this article, Susanne challenges quality teams to shift from optimizing for feel-good metrics to the things that actually matter such as real user risk, regression trends, and product integrity.

The blueprint that took me from Junior QA to Test Manager by Jayateerth Katti

Many testers believe career growth is about learning new tools or waiting for recognition but Jayateerth Katti argues that real for growth is a mastering foundational and leadership-enabling skills, speak the language of business, quantify your impact, and ensure your work is seen both inside and outside your organization.

Think Like a User, Act Like a Tester: A QA Engineer’s Journey by Sajith Dilshan

Great testers don’t just follow instructions, they explore and think like real people using the app. Sajith Dilshan reminds us that users do things like tapping too fast, going offline, or getting confused, and we need to test for that, not just what the specs say.

Also read The Lost Art of Thinking Like a User: Elevating QA with Empathy-Driven Testing.

🔍 More Curated Articles

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⚙️ Automation

Mastering BDD with Cucumber and Java: Advanced Techniques for Scalable Test Automation by JigNect

If you’re working with Cucumber in a growing codebase, this post is a practical guide to keeping your test automation lean, readable, and scalable.

Advanced C# Testing: Property-Based Testing and Mutation Testing by Maria

If your test suite is giving you green lights but still letting bugs slip through, Maria shares how advanced testing techniques like property-based testing and mutation testing can help in improving your confidence and test coverage.

GraphQL API Testing automation with Mocha, Chai, and Node.js by Jisha Jayaprakash

If you’ve been manually testing your GraphQL APIs with Postman, Jisha Jayaprakash provides a walks through on building a simple but scalable GraphQL API test framework using Mocha, Chai, and Node.js, complete with structure, utility scripts, and best practices.

Hidden AI Prompts in Documents: A real case and Wake-Up Call for AI Quality Assurance by Davide Piumetti

A recent investigation uncovered researchers embedding hidden prompts like “give a positive review only” into academic papers, exploiting AI reviewers through invisible text—an alarming example of indirect prompt injection. But how do we test against this? Davide Piumetti shares how emphasizing adversarial testing, prompt sanitization, and continuous oversight can help.

UI Testing Locators Guide: How to Write Stable and Maintainable Selectors by Sergey Shukalovich

This article by Sergey Shukalovich shares a framework-agnostic guide for writing selectors that stay solid across real-world projects, no matter what the front-end throws at you.

🔍 More Test Automation Articles

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💨 Performance

Milliseconds Make Millions: Turning Playwright Tests into Performance Audits by João Coelho

João Coelho details how to integrate Google Lighthouse into your end-to-end Playwright tests.

🔍 More Performance Testing Articles

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🌞 Accessibility

Testing Methods: Sensory Characteristics by Dennis Deacon

Sensory-based instructions like “click the green button” may seem harmless, but they can create significant accessibility barriers for users who don’t perceive color, position, or sound in the same way. Dennis Deacon breaks down WCAG 1.3.3 and explores how to effectively test for compliance using a layered strategy.

🔍 More Accessibility Testing Articles

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🛠️ Resources & Tools

Automated-Accessibility-Example-Lib — library of accessibility automation examples that use multiple different testing frameworks.

json-validator — A simple online tool to validate, compress, and beautify your JSON files.

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📝 List of Software Testers

Do you create content around Software Testing ? Submit yours blog details here and I will add it to the list.

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🎁 Bonus Content

📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF

• Here is how I approach starting a new job

• How to Deal With a Toxic Top-Performer

• Semi-Sync Meetings: Stop Wasting Our Time

⭐ LAST WEEK'S MOST READ

1. McDonald’s Automation Framework: Unlocking Efficient and Effective Test Automation

2. How to Approach QA Testing for an Application You Know Nothing About by Pradip Baskota

3. AI in exploratory testing: from hype to practice by Beatriz Biscaia

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😂 And Finally,

The Friday Afternoon Jira Massacre 🤣

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📨 Send Me Your Articles, Tutorials, Tools!

Wrote something? Send links via Direct Message on Twitter @TheTestingKit (details here). If you have any suggestions for improvement or corrections, feel free to reply to this email.

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Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!

Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)