Issue #211 : Software Testing Notes
10 Years in QA: The Journey
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 211th 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:
Vladimir Josifoski’s 10 Years Journey in QA
Agent-Driven E2E Testing with Cypress
Turn your Playwright test run into a time-series data
Accessible web testing with Playwright and Axe Core
and more…
✨ Featured
Breakpoint 2026: Where QA Teams Figure Out AI Together
Most teams are navigating AI-driven testing without a playbook. Breakpoint 2026 is where QA leaders from NVIDIA, Mastercard, KPMG, Deloitte, and Microsoft share what’s actually working — live sessions, real Q&A, and hands-on workshops. Join from wherever you are, 12–14 May 2026.
📚 Testing
10 Years in QA: The Journey I Never Expected to Have by Vladimir Josifoski
Vladimir Josifoski takes a look at a decade in QA, tracing the shift from ticking checkboxes to a more thoughtful, product-focused discipline shaped by automation and more recently AI.
Systems Thinking and Test Cases by Patrick Prill
Patrick Prill shares a interesting reflection on whether we trust our tests too much, and how exploratory and automated testing each shape what we believe to be true.
AI writes the code. But who tests it? by Axel Kirchner
AI is speeding up how we ship software, but it’s also amplifying a long-standing blind spot such as quality checks that we tend to skip when time gets tight. Axel Kirchner makes a strong case that automated end-to-end tests aren’t a luxury but the only real safety net keeping fast-moving teams from shipping broken, fragile systems.
on that note, Anh Nguyen Lewis has also written about AI Writes Your Tests. Here’s What It Systematically Misses.
🔍 Software Testing
⚙️ Automation
Agent-Driven E2E Testing with Cypress: A Practical Guide to Harness Engineering with Cursor Subagents by Darpan Shah
In this piece, Darpan Shah explores how agent-driven workflows can bring structure to end-to-end testing by wrapping AI in a “harness” of clearly defined roles.
Playprom: Turn your Playwright test run into a time-series data by Lutfi Fitroh Hadi
Learn how to turn your Playwright test runs into observability data instead of endlessly rebuilding custom reporters.
Stop Re-Explaining Your Test Conventions to Claude — Use SKILL.md by Gurudatt S A
Gurudatt S A shows how to make AI-generated Playwright tests consistently follow your conventions using a simple SKILL.md setup. It’s a practical way to stop fighting generic test output and turn AI into something that actually writes tests the way your codebase expects.
Playwright POM (Without Classes): Make Your Tests Clean & Reusable (The Easy Way) by Aparna Mishra
Aparna Mishra walks through a pragmatic take on the Page Object Model by stripping it down to simple reusable functions and showing how to tame growing Playwright test suites without diving into heavier patterns.
Furthermore, Martín Marchetto has also written about Evolving POM: From Page Objects to Agent-Friendly Design
🔍 Test Automation
💨 Performance
From 500 RPS to 100K RPS: How We Discovered the Real Bottleneck in Our Load Testing by Abhinav Tyagi
Abhinav Tyagi walks through a his team’s frustrating journey to hit 100k RPS, revealing how their real bottleneck wasn’t the system but the load testing setup itself. It’s a practical story of failed assumptions, better tooling, and the shift from “just generate load” to actually understanding system behavior under pressure.
🔍 Performance Testing
🌞 Accessibility
Accessible web testing with Playwright and Axe Core by Vitaly Skadorva
Vitaly Skadorva details how to use Playwright and axe-core to automate scans, ARIA snapshots, and real user flows.
🔍 Accessibility Testing
🛠️ Resources & Tools
playprom — A lightweight custom Playwright reporter that pushes test metrics to StatsD (and Prometheus via the StatsD Exporter). Built natively on top of the robust hot-shots client to solve the ephemeral nature of CI test runners, without slowing down your test execution.
📝 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
Most Test Cases Are a Waste of Time, But Here’s What Good Testers Do Instead by Melvin Salazar
Maslow's Hammer and Three Lies QA Tells Itself by Filip Hric
😂 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)