Issue #202 : Software Testing Notes
When you outsource testing to the AI
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 202nd 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:
When Automation Creates Confidence Instead of Safety
Shifting Right
The Trade-Offs Nobody Wants to Talk About in Testing
Why AI won’t save your Flaky Tests
The Page Object Model: A Tale of Taming Test Automation Chaos
and more…
📚 Testing
Shifting Right by David Wardlaw
David Wardlaw makes a interesting case that real software quality can only be judged in production, and argues for “shifting right” by using monitoring, observability, and user behaviour data to spot issues.
When you outsource testing to the AI, you lose the ability to understand your system by Patrick Prill
As AI is writing more and more code, Patrick Prill reminds us that while AI might be able to write dev and test code, engineers still need to stay deeply involved especially where the cost of not really knowing how things work is far higher than a passing test suite.
The Trade-Offs Nobody Wants to Talk About in Testing by Brijesh DEB
In this piece, Brijesh DEB digs into why testing so often loses budget battles, not because quality doesn’t matter, but because its value is framed in risk.
Why AI won't save your Flaky Tests by Bart Vanherck
Bart Vanherck shares why flaky tests are less a nuisance and more an honest signal about deeper design and reliability issues, and why papering over them with AI “self-healing” tools can quietly make things worse.
My Philosophy on Quality Assurance by Joshua Bihun
Often times people assume that QA is a gatekeeping function. Joshua Bihun offers a thoughtful reframing of QA as a confidence-building practice, walking through how good QA helps overall teams.
Additionally, Sandeep Kaur Pama has also written about Why Quality Needs Systems Thinking, Not Just More Testing
🔍 Software Testing
⚙️ Automation
When Automation Creates Confidence Instead of Safety
This article takes a hard look at how test automation can quietly optimise for green dashboards and reassurance rather than actually surfacing the risks that cause real production failures.
Prompt Engineering a Playwright Test Results Dashboard by Martin Poole
Martin Poole shares a story of building a home-grown Playwright results dashboard, driven by a very real reporting pain and a lot of patient iteration with LLMs.
Automation Test Data Approach and Solution by Deepak Karn
Deepak Karn walks us through why test data is often the hidden bottleneck in automation frameworks, breaking it down into creation, population, and validation, with practical examples from both backend and UI-driven approaches.
Secure Credential Management in Playwright by Sajith Dilshan
This is a thorough, security-first walkthrough by Sajith Dilshan on how to handle credentials in Playwright without ever hardcoding secrets, from local development right through DevOps pipelines.
How we migrated our entire E2E testing infrastructure to Playwright by Liron Arad
Liron Arad shares a detailed case study of a SaaS team’s move from a low-code E2E tool to Playwright, explaining how they rebuilt their entire testing stack in under three months.
The Page Object Model: A Tale of Taming Test Automation Chaos
This article revisits the Page Object Model through a very relatable automation failure story, then carefully explains how POM (and Page Factory) reduce breakable tests by separating page structure from test intent.
🔍 Test Automation
🛠️ Resources & Tools
talk2dom — Locate web elements using natural language. Powered by LLM. Works with Selenium
JMeter MCP Server — Supercharge your JMeter performance testing with AI-driven orchestration and analysis.
📝 List of Software Testers
Do you create content around Software Testing ? Submit yours blog details here and I will add it to the list.
🎁 Bonus Content
📌 OTHER INTERESTING STUFF
⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ
Test Scenario vs Test Case – Everything You Need to Know by Jeslyn Stiles
Shift-Left Testing Failed. Here’s What Comes Next. by Pavan Kumar
😂 And Finally,
📨 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.
Thanks to everyone for subscribing and reading!
Happy Testing!
Pritesh(@priteshusdadiya)