Issue #219 : Software Testing Notes
KYC for Testers: Know Your Customer Before You Test a Thing
Hello there! 👋
Welcome to the 219th 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:
What the Animal Kingdom Can Teach Us About Quality Engineering
Test the Feature, Not the Endpoint
Playwright Screencasts and Agentic Receipts
Can AI Replace Days of Performance Analysis? I Tested It on 16 Microservices
WebDriver BiDi for Test Automation: Making Accessibility Part of How You Test
and more…
📚 Testing
AI readiness radar by Callum Akehurst-Ryan
Have you ever wondered that AI might be amplifying existing bad engineering habits rather than fixing them? Callum Akehurst-Ryan shifts the conversation from tooling hype to actual organizational readiness to build better foundation.
KYC for Testers: Know Your Customer Before You Test a Thing by Rahul Parwal
Testing advice often starts with tools and techniques, but Rahul Parwal makes a interesting case about understanding your customers first. I like how it reframes quality as protecting user value, turning a familiar testing checklist into something much more strategic.
Test the Feature, Not the Endpoint by Gil Zilberfeld
Gil Zilberfeld challenges the idea that API tests alone can’t provide meaningful confidence, arguing that real assurance comes from testing the workflows those APIs enable.
What the Animal Kingdom Can Teach Us About Quality Engineering by Pricilla Bilavendran
Pricilla Bilavendran takes a playful look at software testing through animal archetypes, using traits from nature to reflect the different strengths that make teams effective as testers.
Looking Good, Testers! by James Thomas
In this thoughtful piece, James Thomas explores testing as the act of truly looking, and where AI fits on the spectrum between direct understanding and abstraction.
🔍 Software Testing
⚙️ Automation
System/UI Tests – The Layer You Should Hate Needing by Kevin Roe
While so many teams quietly accumulate slow, flaky suites and mistake them for coverage. Kevin Roe makes a strong case for treating system tests as a scarce, high cost resource, reserved only for failures that can emerge after deployment.
How I Made Our Test Suite 43% Faster by Deleting One Configuration by Yevhen Bozhenko
Yevhen Bozhenko turns a familiar Selenium best practice into a concrete performance investigation, showing how overlapping wait strategies can quietly drain speed from an entire test suite.
Tests That Don't Lie, Part 1: Readability and DSL by Kamil J.
This article is about writing tests that optimize for confidence and maintainability rather than chasing coverage metrics, using patterns that make tests read closer to business requirements. Kamil J. advocates for treating tests as long lived documentation, not just code that happens to verify behavior.
Playwright Screencasts and Agentic Receipts by Martin Poole
Martin Poole explores Playwright’s new screencast capabilities. Turning automation runs into reviewable receipts is a good idea, especially as AI agents make understanding the path taken just as important as the outcome.
How I Standardized a Large Cypress Test Codebase with ESLint and Prettier by John
This article walks through using ESLint, Prettier, hooks, and CI checks to turn code style into an automated rule.
If Playwright Has Auto-Waiting, Why Do We Still Need Explicit Waits? by Arpita Biswas
Playwright’s auto waiting has it’s place but it’s not a one cure for all illness. Arpita Biswas explains where Playwright’s auto waiting ends and where explicit waits still earn their place, drawing a useful line between element readiness and application readiness.
🔍 Test Automation
💨 Performance
Can AI Replace Days of Performance Analysis? I Tested It on 16 Microservices by shabab koohi
shabab koohi explores an AI skill that automates performance engineering across a complex microservices stack, from load testing and profiling to root cause analysis.
🔍 Performance Testing
🌞 Accessibility
WebDriver BiDi for Test Automation: Making Accessibility Part of How You Test by Puja Jagani
Puja Jagani explores how WebDriver BiDi brings accessibility checks directly into everyday test automation by exposing the browser’s accessibility tree as a first class testing target.
🔍 Accessibility Testing
🛠️ Resources & Tools
VOLDER — schema builder and data validation and parsing
Dummy — Run mock server based off an API contract with one command
Playwright Logger — A clean and readable Playwright reporter that turns noisy test output into structured, timestamped, developer-friendly logs — all right in the terminal
📝 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
The quirky little bug that taught me a valuable testing lesson by Ady Stokes
I Stopped Rebuilding My QA Context Every Session. Here Is the System I Built Instead. by Jaren Charles Cudilla
😂 And Finally,
Claude Fable 5's Latest Benchmarks For Non US Citizens 🤣
📨 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)