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.

Save your spot!

📚 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

• How to Make Architecture Decisions

• Don't become an Engineering Manager

• How to Work With Anyone

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Most Test Cases Are a Waste of Time, But Here’s What Good Testers Do Instead by Melvin Salazar

2. Maslow's Hammer and Three Lies QA Tells Itself by Filip Hric

3. Quality Isn't a Testing Problem by Alan Page

😂 And Finally,

Dev and Test Talks 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 210th 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:

• Maslow’s Hammer and Three Lies QA Tells Itself

• Most Test Cases Are a Waste of Time, But Here’s What Good Testers Do Instead

• TypeScript Testing Patterns: Unit, Integration, and E2E Strategies That Scale

• Custom JMeter extension that simplifies both load testing setup

• Your AI Agent Has No Tests - Here’s How to Fix That in 5 Minutes

and more…

📚 Testing

Testing the “Yes-Man” in Your Pocket by Jeff Nyman

Another fascinating article from Jeff Nyman, this one is about Stanford-led study showing how today’s AI models, optimized for agreement, can subtly reinforce harmful behavior and it’s a sharp reminder that testing AI now means measuring real human impact and not just model accuracy.

Maslow's Hammer and Three Lies QA Tells Itself by Filip Hric

Filip Hric truly captures the growing unease in QA circles as AI reshapes development, pushing back on the comforting narratives and arguing that testing isn’t immune to the broader transformation already underway.

Quality Isn't a Testing Problem by Alan Page

Alan Page challenges the long-standing assumption that testing equals quality, arguing instead that quality is shaped by organizational systems, incentives, and feedback loops.

Anatomy of a deceptive "works on my machine" bug by Benjamin Bischoff

This is a nicely told deep dive by Benjamin Bischoff into a classic “works on my machine” bug that turns out to be anything but simple. This is a great reminder of how easily environment drift and small communication gaps can mislead even experienced team.

Most Test Cases Are a Waste of Time, But Here’s What Good Testers Do Instead by Melvin Salazar

Melvin Salazar pushes back on the comforting idea that more test cases equal better quality, arguing instead that real value comes from risk-driven thinking, exploration, and challenging assumptions rather than just coverage.

You Can’t Spell “Testability” Without “Stability” by Joshua Bihun

Joshua Bihun explores the all-too-familiar frustration of flaky tests and inconsistent QA results and shares how the real culprit is often an unstable test environment rather than poor testing itself.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

TypeScript Testing Patterns: Unit, Integration, and E2E Strategies That Scale by Matthias Bruns

Matthias Bruns walks through how testing in TypeScript shifts the focus from catching basic errors to building a scalable, layered testing strategy. It’s a practical take on balancing types with tests, though it does make you wonder how many teams truly reduce test volume as suggested or just keep adding more on top of what TypeScript already guarantees.

Your AI Agent Has No Tests - Here's How to Fix That in 5 Minutes by Kang

Kang introduces a testing framework for AI agents that shifts focus from prompt or output validation to how tools are chosen, errors handled, and decisions made in between.

Beyond Pass and Fail: Building a Playwright Observability Layer by Viatsheslav (Slavik) Pashanin

Viatsheslav reframes Playwright from a simple pass/fail testing tool into a full-fledged observability layer, treating tests as signals for different audiences.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

I Built a Single JMeter Jar That Handles Dynamic Thread Group, Auto Correlation, and Boundary Extraction — Here’s How It Works by Jagadeesh Sakamuri

Jagadeesh Sakamuri has created a custom JMeter extension that simplifies both load testing setup and the correlation process, aiming to replace cluttered configurations with a more bearable, almost “one-click” approach.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Accessibility Regression Testing With XCUI by Mark Steadman

Mark Steadman shows how Xcode 15’s built-in performAccessibilityAudit() makes automated accessibility checks in XCUI tests.

Mobile app accessibility under EN 301 549 v4.1.0

This piece walks through how the upcoming EN 301 549 update reshapes mobile accessibility testing by aligning more closely with WCAG 2.2, clarifying long-standing ambiguities (like how to treat web views), and expanding what teams are expected to validate across app layers.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

AgentProbe — Playwright for AI Agents — test what your agent DOES, not what it SAYS. YAML-first, 2900+ tests.

Dynamic Thread Group & Auto Correlation — Dynamic Thread Group, Auto Correlation, and Boundary Extractor for JMeter

📝 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

• Systems Thinking

• What is OAuth?

• How I Use Claude Code

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Testing LLM Outputs: A Hands-On Guide to DeepEval Metrics by Serhii Smetanskyi

2. Who Tests the Tests? AI, QA, and the Verification Paradox by Irfan Mujagić

3. From Prompt to Passing Test: A Complete Agentic QA Session by Ivan Davidov

😂 And Finally,

The real guinea pigs of the IT world now! 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 209th 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:

• Who Tests the Tests? AI, QA, and the Verification Paradox

• Trust in Test Planning

• Testing LLM Outputs: A Hands-On Guide to DeepEval Metrics

• Designing Realistic Load Test Scenarios with k6

• Test Your Website with Just a Keyboard: The Easiest Accessibility Check

and more…

📚 Testing

Put quality at the centre of what you do – A Review of ‘Out of the Crisis’ by W. Edwards Deming by Mike Harris

Mike Harris takes a reflective revisit of Out of the Crisis and explores how Deming’s ideas, especially the feedback loop of continuous improvement and shared purpose can shape a team’s approach to quality.

Who Tests the Tests? AI, QA, and the Verification Paradox by Irfan Mujagić

In this piece Irfan Mujagić tackles the awkward loop created when AI generates tests and then we’re told to “verify with more tests”. As Irfan points out We should be focusing on adversarial thinking, domain knowledge, and intentional review rather than piling on automation.

The Knowledge Void Eats Quality for Breakfast by Gil Zilberfeld

Gil Zilberfeld explores the “Knowledge Void” that creeps in when AI-generated code and tests outpace our understanding on what systems actually do and how they’re validated.

Trust in Test Planning by Jesper Ottosen

Jesper Ottosen reframes test planning as less about generating artifacts and more about building trust, alignment, and shared understanding.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Testing LLM Outputs: A Hands-On Guide to DeepEval Metrics by Serhii Smetanskyi

Serhii Smetanskyi takes a deep dive into making LLM testing feel a bit more like real engineering by plugging “LLM-as-judge” metrics into familiar pytest workflows.

Why Every Testing Tool Generates Different JUnit XML by Dennis Martinez

Dennis Martinez digs into the world of JUnit XML, showing how a “standard” with no real spec still manages to power useful tooling. It’s a nice reminder that messy formats can still be valuable.

From Prompt to Passing Test: A Complete Agentic QA Session by Ivan Davidov

Lean how a well-instructed AI agent can go from vague prompt to fully working test suite. Ivan Davidov has written series of articles exploring the app, generating code, and wiring everything into CI.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Designing Realistic Load Test Scenarios with k6 by Indra A.

Indra A shares how to design K6 load test step by step and shows how modeling ramp-up, peak periods, and “think time” should be used.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Test Your Website with Just a Keyboard: The Easiest Accessibility Check

This article makes a strong case for the simplest possible accessibility audit by putting your mouse away and navigating with just a keyboard is a fast way to uncover surprisingly common usability failures that affect far more users than most teams assume.

Accessible web testing with Cypress and Axe Core by Vitaly Skadorva

Vitaly Skadorva has written a practical guide to include accessibility into your test suite with Cypress and axe-core.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

AI-Test-Case-Generator-Eval — AI-powered tool for evaluating LLM-generated test cases across multiple models with human and LLM-as-judge scoring

📝 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

• How Programmers Spend Their Time

• The secret to getting promoted

• Software Performance Engineering

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Stop Writing API Tests Manually — Let Your OpenAPI Spec Do the Work by David Mello

2. Quality Engineering with AI by Callum Akehurst-Ryan

3. End-to-End Testing with Playwright: Complete Guide with Page Object Model by Satish Reddy Budati

😂 And Finally,

AI Agents and QA 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 208th 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:

• Stop Writing API Tests Manually — Let Your OpenAPI Spec Do the Work

• Quality Nonsense: Are We All Just A Bundle of Skills?

• End-to-End Testing with Playwright: Complete Guide with Page Object Model

• The Hidden Cost of 100% Code Coverage

• Quality Engineering with AI

and more…

✨ Featured

The Quality Leadership Academy: Take your leadership skills to the next level

Most QA executives are trained to execute tests. Few are trained to lead a software testing strategy. The Quality Leadership Academy (QLA), founded by PractiTest, is a selective professional development program designed to bridge the gap between technical testing and strategic leadership.

Built for current or aspiring QA executives, the Academy moves beyond task management to focus on risk-based thinking, business-aligned KPIs, and leading a high-impact software testing strategy.

Apply now, for Free!

📚 Testing

Quality Nonsense: Are We All Just A Bundle of Skills? by Judy Mosley

A reflective piece by Judy Mosley built around the podcast Shell Game, exploring hands-on experiments with AI and how those experiences shift from curiosity to quiet unease about where humans fit in.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Quality Engineering with AI by Callum Akehurst-Ryan

This is a practical look at how AI is reshaping software testing. Callum Akehurst-Ryan shares that how quality teams need to adapt quickly by focusing less on brittle, low-level tests and more on behaviour, risk, and real-world outcomes.

Stop Writing API Tests Manually — Let Your OpenAPI Spec Do the Work by David Mello

A compelling case by David Mello for treating your OpenAPI spec as the source of truth for API testing, using tools like Schemathesis to generate broad, evolving test coverage instead of relying on hand-written or AI-generated cases.

AI-Assisted Cypress CI: Detecting Selector Drift and Proposing Fixes Automatically by Raju Dandigam

Raju Dandigam shares a neat walkthrough of using AI to assist with analyzing failures and suggesting fixes directly in pull requests within your CI pipeline.

End-to-End Testing with Playwright: Complete Guide with Page Object Model by Satish Reddy Budati

Satish Reddy Budati shares a comprehensive guide to building production-ready end-to-end testing with Playwright, covering everything from structure and reliability to scaling across browsers and CI pipelines.

47 Failed. 3 Passed. A Senior QA Engineer’s Honest Week With AI. by Jalexander

This is a candid week-in-the-life experiment of letting AI take over QA work. I found the comparison to a “non-learning junior engineer” particularly interesting as it leaves us wondering whether the real skill shift isn’t using AI more, but knowing exactly where to stop trusting it.

Evolving POM: From Page Objects to Agent-Friendly Design by Martín Marchetto

Martín Marchetto makes a compelling case that classic Playwright POM isn’t obsolete but needs a rethink for the agent era, showing how exposing test actions as “tools” can bridge the gap without a full rewrite.

The Hidden Cost of 100% Code Coverage by Kurdish Gupta

Kurdish Gupta shares a sharp critique of the obsession with 100% code coverage, arguing that it often creates a false sense of safety while quietly draining time, morale, and momentum from teams that should be focused on shipping.

Playwright Actions: How to Click, Type and Interact with Web Elements by Aparna Mishra

This is a beginner-friendly walkthrough by Aparna Mishra on what comes after Playwright locators, shifting the focus toward actually interacting with the UI and validating behavior so tests start to resemble real user flows.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Black Friday: Would You Choose the Right Performance Test? by Oleh Koren

In this article Oleh Koren, uses a simple poll to highlight how often performance testing concepts get blurred, then zooms in on spike testing as the one teams tend to overlook despite it being closest to real production chaos.

Automating JMeter Script Generation from HAR Files for Parallel API Workflows by Sandhya badukonda

This article walks through a practical workaround for turning HAR files into realistic Apache JMeter scripts, using automation to preserve timing and parallelism without the usual manual pain.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Three accessibility assumptions

This piece challenges some of the tidy mental models we rely on when working with accessibility tools, arguing that the DOM, accessibility tree, and screen reader output are far less definitive than they appear in debugging views.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

AgentProbe — Define expected behaviors in YAML. Run them against any LLM. Get deterministic pass/fail results. Catch regressions before your users do.

Schemathesis — automatically generates property-based tests from your OpenAPI or GraphQL schema and exercises the edge cases that break your API.

📝 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

• Mitchell Hashimoto's AI Adoption Journey

• How to Beat Decision Fatigue

• The Shift to Managing Managers

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. The Test Pyramid Was a Lie (Or at Least an Oversimplification) by Phil Hargreaves

2. Writing tests with Claude Code - part 1 - initial results by Bas Dijkstra

3. The Testing Skill Gap Your Competitors Are Exploiting by Matt Lewis

😂 And Finally,

"AI-first" strategy and the bug count 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 207th 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:

• The Testing Skill Gap Your Competitors Are Exploiting

• How to Build a Scalable API Automation Framework Using Java, RestAssured, and JUnit 5

• Escaped Defect Rate: Quality is about hard truths

• Testing non-predictive systems: letting the tests teach you

• Your K6 Tests Are Lying to You (And It’s Not K6’s Fault)

and more…

📚 Testing

The Test Pyramid Was a Lie (Or at Least an Oversimplification) by Phil Hargreaves

Phil Hargreaves takes a thoughtful look at the test pyramid and challenges the idea of optimizing for test layers and coverage, and instead explores a more practical workflows that matter most to users.

Testing non-predictive systems: letting the tests teach you by Peter Wilson

What does testing looks like when there’s no clear answers? Peter Wilson talks about how to implement an iterative “testing cycle” that gradually evolves showing how testers build confidence in system behaviour over time rather than simply verifying expected outputs.

The Testing Skill Gap Your Competitors Are Exploiting by Matt Lewis

Matt Lewis argues that the biggest testing risk today isn’t poor automation but it’s losing the investigative, business-aware thinking that experienced testers bring to the table.

How to Measure E2E Test Coverage Without a Standard Tool by Josphine J.

Josphine tackles the deceptively simple question of E2E test coverage and explains why standard coverage tools don’t work for E2E tests, and what to measure instead.

Escaped Defect Rate: Quality is about hard truths, not ego boosts by Alison

Alison blends QA concepts with personal reflection to explore how decisions that look “correct” by conventional metrics can still fail once they reach real world.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Migrating From Cypress.env To cy.env and Cypress.expose Methods by Gleb Bahmutov

Gleb Bahmutov shares a notable change coming in Cypress v16 that rethinks how environment variables and secrets are handled during tests.

It’s clearly a bug, but what is the bug exactly? by Joep Schuurkes

Joep Schuurkes unpacks a puzzling Playwright issue and walks through the debugging process and explains how dynamic test names combined with Playwright’s double evaluation of test files can lead to confusing behaviour.

AI-Assisted Development is the New Test Automation by Stuart Thomas

This article by Stuart Thomas draws an interesting parallel between the rise of test automation and today’s surge in AI-assisted development, arguing that the real shift isn’t about tools replacing engineers but about how engineers choose to use them.

Writing tests with Claude Code - part 1 - initial results by Bas Dijkstra

Bas Dijkstra explores what happens when an LLM is asked to generate an entire API test suite from scratch, walking through the Bas ’s experiment generating 23 REST tests in minutes and then evaluating their real value.

Your API Tests Are Passing. That’s the Problem. by Gil Zilberfeld

This article introduces the idea of the “Green Mirage,” and through simple API testing examples, Gil Zilberfeld explores how stronger assertions and clearer thinking about what a test actually proves can reveal hidden gaps.

How to Build a Scalable API Automation Framework Using Java, RestAssured, and JUnit 5 by Ameya Sawant

Ameya Sawant provides a walks through building a scalable API automation framework with Rest Assured, JUnit 5, and Apache Maven.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Your K6 Tests Are Lying to You (And It’s Not K6’s Fault)

This piece takes a thoughtful look at how load testing with k6 can quietly mislead teams if they misunderstand its virtual user model, especially the common assumption that VUs equal real users.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

QaSkills.sh — is an open source directory of curated QA testing skills designed for AI coding agents. You can install these skills into Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, and 30+ other AI agents to give them expert QA knowledge.

MCPLab — A tool to test and evaluate MCP servers and evaluating AI/LLM tool integrations.

📝 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

• Ideas Over Implementation

• Three Bad Managers

• Top 10 web hacking techniques of 2025

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Software Quality is Heading Toward a Revolution by Josh Grant

2. Persona-based testing with AI agents: find the UX gaps your E2E tests can't see

3. From Dev Branch to Production: A QA Engineer’s Guide to CI/CD Pipelines by Himanshu Pathak

😂 And Finally,

AI is about to go to PIP 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 206th 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:

• Software Quality is Heading Toward a Revolution

• Goal-Based Agentic Testing for Mobile Applications

• Cypress cy.prompt() and the Two Competing Visions for AI-Powered Testing

• Chaos Engineering for ML: What Happens When Your Model Lies?

• Forget WebDriverManager: Use Selenium Manager Instead

and more…

✨ Featured

These three BrowserStack AI Agents are changing how website QA works

Catch hidden accessibility gaps, get code-level fix guidance straight from your DOM, and reduce visual review time by 3x.

BrowserStack's Website Scanner now has agents that don't just flag problems, they investigate them. Three agents, one scan, and fewer questions when it’s time to ship.

Scan your website for free!

📚 Testing

Why Your Transition to Quality Engineering May Fail by Barry Ehigiator

A thoughtful exploration by Barry Ehigiator on why many teams enthusiastically adopt the language of Quality Engineering yet struggle to see real improvement, arguing that the issue usually isn’t QE itself but how superficially implemented.

We Need to Stop Queueing Quality by Jitesh Gosai

Using a restaurant kitchen analogy, Jitesh Gosai explores why the familiar “In Test” column on team boards can unintentionally create bottlenecks, handoffs, and late feedback, even when everyone looks busy.

Software Quality is Heading Toward a Revolution by Josh Grant

Josh Grant shares an interesting reflection on how easily product quality can slip even at companies that pride themselves as pioneers of Quality.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Goal-Based Agentic Testing for Mobile Applications by Russell Morley

Russell Morley shares how to approach goal-based agentic testing for mobile apps, where tests focus on the outcome like successfully logging in rather than rigid step-by-step scripts that tend to break when UI details change.

Persona-based testing with AI agents: find the UX gaps your E2E tests can't see

A thoughtful look at persona-based AI testing, where an agent explores a product like a real user and identify UX gaps traditional tests never catch.

From Dev Branch to Production: A QA Engineer’s Guide to CI/CD Pipelines by Himanshu Pathak

Himanshu Pathak details a walkthrough of how modern CI/CD pipelines guide code from development to production, highlighting the testing, security checks, and environment promotions that keep rapid releases safe.

Cypress cy.prompt() and the Two Competing Visions for AI-Powered Testing by Gurudatt S A

Gurudatt S A takes a deep dive comparing Cypress embedding AI directly into the runner with cy.prompt() to translate plain-English steps into cached, deterministic tests, and Playwright giving external agents full control of the browser.

Forget WebDriverManager: Use Selenium Manager Instead by Andrii Olieinik

A helpful reminder that one of Selenium’s most popular utilities has quietly become unnecessary, as Andrii Olieinik points out that Selenium 4.6+ now includes its own built-in driver management through Selenium Manager. Learn how to use them in your test automation.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Chaos Engineering for ML: What Happens When Your Model Lies? by Irfan Mujagić

Irfan Mujagić introduces “model fault injection,” a testing mindset borrowed from chaos engineering that deliberately corrupts ML outputs to see how the rest of the system reacts.

k6-cucumber-steps: Run K6 Performance Tests with Cucumber BDD Syntax by Chetachi (Paschal) Enyimiri

In this guide, Chetachi (Paschal) Enyimiri shares how to use k6-cucumber-steps to write performance tests for k6 using familiar Cucumber-style Gherkin syntax.

Load testing a Consumer that uses RabbitMQ using JMeter

This article walks through how to load test a RabbitMQ consumer by simulating message production with Apache JMeter and monitoring how the consumer behaves under pressure.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Contrast Checker — Checks contrast for WCAG compliance

vcrpy — Automatically mock your HTTP interactions to simplify and speed up testing

JSON Viewer — An online JSON viewer that lets you minify, beautify, and load JSON from a file.

📝 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

• Soft-Skill Upgrades for Tech Leaders

• The Deletion Test

• How to coach your team (without making them defensive)

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. How We Made Our E2E Tests 12x Faster by Alexandru NEAMTU

2. Investigating AI: Playwright-Test-Planner and Playwright-Test-Generator by T.J. Maher

3. When Test Cases Aren’t Enough: Why I Use Stories by Peter Wilson

😂 And Finally,

Vibe Coder Mortal Enemy 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 205th 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:

• Measuring QA Success: Beyond Test Counts and Bug Reports

• Validating JSON API Responses in k6

• Using the browser console for accessibility testing

• Clean API tests with cypress aliases

• How We Made Our E2E Tests 12x Faster

and more…

✨ Featured

The 2026 State of AI in Software Testing

Learn how AI is being used in practice, where teams are seeing real gains, how QA roles are beginning to shift as adoption grows and a lot more.

AI is now part of most QA workflows, but outcomes vary widely. BrowserStack’s 2026 AI in Software Testing report is based on a global survey of more than 250 software testing leaders.

Download the report!

📚 Testing

Quality Insight: Exploratory Testing Life by Judy Mosley

With AI at the centre stage shifting career paths, many of us feel this strange anxiety. Judy Mosley takes a look with the lens of an “Explorer” mindset and shares reflections on solo testing, community conversations, and the messy reality of modern tech work.

When Test Cases Aren’t Enough: Why I Use Stories by Peter Wilson

Peter Wilson explores how storytelling can ground testing in real-world context, especially when working with complex or AI-driven systems where “correct” isn’t always obvious, and even developers can’t predict the outcome.

Why Test, Test What, Then How? by James Thomas

This piece is a thoughtful walk-through by James Thomas on what intentional testing looks like in an AI oriented, distributed system.

Measuring QA Success: Beyond Test Counts and Bug Reports by Joshua Bihun

Joshua Bihun takes a hard look at the way many teams measure QA and makes a compelling case that metrics such as test and automation counts, bug counts often fail to reflect meaningful quality.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Investigating AI: Playwright-Test-Planner and Playwright-Test-Generator by T.J. Maher

This practical walkthrough by T.J. Maher puts three emerging Playwright AI agents called planner, generator, and healer. The article details how they can outline a test strategy, spin up a TypeScript page-object framework, and even try to patch broken tests using nothing more than a basic scenario.

Clean API tests with cypress aliases by Bart Vanherck

If you’ve ever wrestled with deeply nested .then() chains in Cypress API tests, Bart Vanherck shares a cleaner pattern built around aliases and .as(), showing how to store, reuse, and safely chain request responses.

How We Made Our E2E Tests 12x Faster by Alexandru NEAMTU

Alexandru NEAMTU shows how they improved Playwright test suite execution time from 90 seconds to only 7 seconds by using fast API logins, simplifying checks, and removing extra setup work.

Why Your Playwright Tests Are Still Flaky (And It’s Not Because of Timing) by Sourojit Das

As Playwright is all around this days, Sourojit Das challenges the common belief that switching to Playwright automatically eliminates flaky tests. he explains why instability persists even with auto-waiting and shows that the real causes often lie in system architecture, not the test framework.

When Your AI Deletes the Database: Why Testing LLM Applications Requires a Different Playbook

This article provides a walks through of a practical, layered approach to testing nondeterministic AI systems using semantic evaluation, small but meaningful test suites, and tight feedback loops.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Validating JSON API Responses in k6

If you’re using k6 for load testing and mostly watching response times, this article walks through a comprehensive set of JSON validations you can add to your tests.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Using the browser console for accessibility testing

Take a look at this practical introduction to using the browser console as a lightweight accessibility test tool, showing how a few small JavaScript snippets can instantly surface headings, landmarks, labels, focus order, and more issues.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Animate SQL — Visualize SQL queries online.

CSV SQL Tool — Run SQL queries on CSV files directly in your browser. No data leaves your browser. Fast, private, and easy to use.

📝 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

• Software engineers can no longer neglect their soft skills

• Closing the Software Loop

• Software Performance Engineering: The Ideas I Keep Coming Back To

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Playwright MCP Is Killing Traditional Test Automation, Here’s How SDETs Must Adapt in 2026 by Pramod Dutta

2. Let’s get Playwright with a few tests set up quickly by Melissa Fisher

3. Forget coverage; focus on risk by Stuart Thomas

😂 And Finally,

When you are asked to test in Prod 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 204th 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:

• Accessibility Testing on Windows on Mac

• Session-Based Test Management

• A Field Guide to Not Overengineering Test Automation

• Your Automation Is Green. Your Risk Is Red

• Playwright MCP Is Killing Traditional Test Automation

and more…

📚 Testing

Forget coverage; focus on risk by Stuart Thomas

Code coverage can be a comforting but can become a misleading metric. Stuart Thomas argues against having just green dashboards and makes the case for a risk-first testing strategy that focuses on critical failure modes and outcomes.

Are You Testing Features or Testing Decisions? by Deepak Karn

Deepak Karn makes a subtle but powerful distinction between testing features and testing the consequences of the decisions behind them.

Session-Based Test Management by Ryan Craven

If you’ve ever struggled to explain what “a day of exploratory testing” actually covered, Ryan Craven takes a deep dive into Session-Based Test Management as a practical way to add structure, visibility, and metrics.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Let’s get Playwright with a few tests set up quickly by Melissa Fisher

If you’ve been meaning to try Playwright but weren’t sure where to start, Melissa Fisher shares a walkthrough on just how quickly you can start a project and run the example tests.

Your Automation Is Green. Your Risk Is Red: The Dunning–Kruger Effect in software testing by Pricilla Bilavendran

In this article, Pricilla Bilavendran explores how the Dunning–Kruger effect quietly shapes software testing, from overconfidence in coverage and automation to leadership decisions.

unittest to pytest Migration: Fixtures and Async Patterns by Seojin Yoon

Moving from unittest to pytest? Seojin Yoon shares a walks through of a a real-world migration of 847 tests and shows exactly where the wins come from.

A Field Guide to Not Overengineering Test Automation by Irfan Mujagić

Irfan Mujagić shares how well-intentioned test automation quietly drifts into overengineering and offers a practical warning signs, three deceptively simple questions to ask before automating anything.

Eagle Eye: Turning Screenshot Review Into Deterministic QA by Andrew Orobator

“Eagle Eye” is a screenshot review system

Andrew Orobator details how subagents, retries, failure classes, and state matrices turn fuzzy screenshot QA into something far more useful and offers a practical blueprint for treating screenshot review as static analysis.

Playwright MCP Is Killing Traditional Test Automation, Here’s How SDETs Must Adapt in 2026 by Pramod Dutta

Pramod Dutta takes a look at why traditional Selenium suites are creaking under the weight of AI-generated code and how Playwright MCP flips the model by letting AI agents generate, run, and even clean up tests using the browser’s accessibility tree.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

The chart that lied on Monday by Gabriele Wayner

This is a sharp, experience-soaked reminder by Gabriele Wayner that how early low latency can hide the slow tail latency, retries, and rising cost per successful request that only show up under real load.

Using SharedArray with k6 by Marlo Henrique

This is a practical deep dive by Marlo Henrique into how SharedArray (and the experimental fs and csv modules) can reduce test data overhead in high-volume runs.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Accessibility Testing on Windows on Mac by Tatyana Bayramova

While not targated at testers, this is still a very useful article by Tatyana Bayramova sharing how to start accessibility testing on MAC and Windows machine.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

JSONGenerator.io — Generate JSON data structures for mock data.

SSR Checker — Quick and visual way to verify server-side rendering (SSR) on any web page.

📝 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

• Why Senior Engineers Let Bad Projects Fail

• A Personal AI Maturity Model (PAIMM)

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Measuring Engineering ROI

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Building Your Testing Career Path by Ryan Craven

2. Playwright BrowserContext: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Configure It by Juan G. Vazquez Jr.

3. Test smart: how to solve dilemmas as QA? by Julia Kocbek

😂 And Finally,

The Real SDLC🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 203rd 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:

• Test smart: how to solve dilemmas as QA?

• The Illusion of Automation: When More Tests Don’t Mean More Quality

• What developers get wrong about testing

• TDD Was Never About Tests. AI Proved It.

• Implementing breakpoint tests that include system recovery

and more…

📚 Testing

Building Your Testing Career Path by Ryan Craven

Ryan Craven maps out the often-overlooked career landscape in testing, from junior roles to Staff, Principal, management, specializations, and even adjacent paths like product or DevOps, with a practical focus on how to move intentionally rather than drift.

Test smart: how to solve dilemmas as QA? by Julia Kocbek

Julia Kocbek shares a thoughtful look at life as a QA highlights three common traps and explores how they quietly derail good products.

What About Expected Results? by Jesper Ottosen

This thoughtful piece by Jesper Ottosen questions the long-standing habit of embedding expected results into every test step, arguing that in many cases it creates redundancy and subtly biases the person doing the testing.

Your Quality Engineering will be richer if you know how Quality Engineering originated by Mike Harris

In this article, Mike Harris takes a step back into 1950s Japan to revisit the roots of Quality Engineering, tracing Taguchi’s ideas on societal loss, variability, and shifting quality “left” as a way to build what the Mike calls long-term engineering memory.

What developers get wrong about testing by Maaike Brinkhof

Maaike Brinkhof has written a candid, thoughtful defense of context-driven, human-centered testing reminding us that while automation is powerful, it’s often the curious tester wandering into the unknown who finds the bugs that truly matter.

The Software Quality and Productivity Crisis Executives Won’t Address by Bob Marshall

This is a sweeping, data-heavy reflection from a 50-year industry veteran arguing that software’s real crisis isn’t technical but executive. Bob Marshall urges teams to reclaim ownership themeselves.

A Quality Czar Won’t Fix Your System by Alan Page

Quality rarely fails because no one owns it, but because the system quietly teaches teams what really matters when tradeoffs get uncomfortable.

This reflective piece from Alan Page uses Microsoft’s new “quality czar” role to explore a whether titles change outcomes, or whether the real signal comes the first time a deadline slips.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

TDD Was Never About Tests. AI Proved It. by Mpholoane Bapela

Mpholoane Bapela revisits Test-Driven Development through an AI-era lens, arguing that while tools like Copilot can now churn out tests and implementations in seconds, the real value of TDD was always the design clarity.

Playwright BrowserContext: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Configure It by Juan G. Vazquez Jr.

This is a practical deep dive by Juan G. Vazquez Jr. into Playwright’s BrowserContext that makes test isolation, parallelism, and auth handling.

The Illusion of Automation: When More Tests Don’t Mean More Quality

This article pushes back on the comforting idea that more automated tests automatically mean better quality, arguing instead that volume without strategy often creates noise, false confidence, and mounting maintenance costs.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Implementing breakpoint tests that include system recovery by Zlatin Stanimirov

If you’ve never deliberately pushed your backend past its limits, Zlatin Stanimirov shares a walks through of classical breakpoint testing and then goes further with recovery validation using Node.js and Locust.

Introduction & Getting Started with k6

Get started with Performance testing using k6. This post give a glimpse of how to setup the K6 with basic scenario execution.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Login-C-Sharp — C# automation framework using Playwright + NUnit for login testing. Built entirely with GitHub Copilot prompts. Includes Page Object Model, CI/CD with GitHub Actions, and Allure reporting.

test-staged 🚫🧪 — Run only the tests that are related to your changes. Stop pushing broken code.

📝 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

• No management needed: anti-patterns in early-stage engineering teams

• The Quiet Discipline of Great Engineering Teams

• The way I run standup meetings

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Prompt Engineering a Playwright Test Results Dashboard by Martin Poole

2. The Trade-Offs Nobody Wants to Talk About in Testing by Brijesh DEB

3. The Page Object Model: A Tale of Taming Test Automation Chaos

😂 And Finally,

Vibe Coding Cycle 🤣

📨 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)

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

• Managing up as a Software Engineer

• Prioritize Relatively

• Getting Real With LLMs

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Test Scenario vs Test Case – Everything You Need to Know by Jeslyn Stiles

2. Awesome QA Prompt: Using AI to Make Testing Work Better

3. Shift-Left Testing Failed. Here’s What Comes Next. by Pavan Kumar

😂 And Finally,

"Bub fix" 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 201st 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:

• Test Scenario vs Test Case – Everything You Need to Know

• When a Test Passes but the Feature Is Broken: A QA Reality Check

• Building a Scalable Automation Framework with Playwright + TypeScript

• Our Load Tests Were Not Complete. Until We Combined K6 and Playwright

• 7 Fundamental Software Testing Principles Every Tester Should Know

and more…

📚 Testing

Test Scenario vs Test Case – Everything You Need to Know by Jeslyn Stiles

Jeslyn Stiles walks through the often-confused difference between test scenarios and test cases, explaining how one sets the “what” from a business perspective while the other drills into “how” of validation.

How to Become a QA Engineer in 2026 by Rothy Yorn

Rothy Yorn lays out a clear, step-by-step learning path for becoming a QA Engineer in 2026.

When a Test Passes but the Feature Is Broken: A QA Reality Check by Vladimir Josifoski

Vladimir Josifoski explores how automation often confirms behavior without proving value. It’s a thoughtful reminder that mocks, happy paths, and passing tests can build false confidence, and that exploratory testing and critical thinking are what ultimately bridge the gap between “works in CI” and “works in reality.”

Testing for Humans Who Do Weird Things (Not Perfect Test Cases) by Jaren Charles

Jaren Charles challenges the textbook idea of happy and sad path testing, arguing that real users blur those lines and expose gaps that neat test cases never catch.

The Art of Test Authoring: A Blueprint for QA Success by Lukas

This article reframes test authoring foundation of good QA, showing how thoughtful scenario design connects product understanding with stable automation rather than just producing more test steps.

7 Fundamental Software Testing Principles Every Tester Should Know by Chathurika Wijayawardana

Chathurika Wijayawardana revisits the seven classic ISTQB testing principles and explains why they still matter.

Shift-Left Testing Failed. Here’s What Comes Next. by Pavan Kumar

This article takes a critical look at shift-left testing, arguing that what promised faster quality often delivered developer burnout, brittle pipelines, and a false sense of control.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Cypress.Promise.all() and cy.mapChain(): Two Hidden Gems for Cypress You Won’t Let Go Once You Try Them by Sebastian Clavijo Suero

Sebastian Clavijo Suero takes a playful, deep dive into a very real Cypress pain point: combining results from multiple async commands without descending into nested .then() chaos.

Building a Scalable Automation Framework with Playwright + TypeScript by Rajesh Yemul

Rajesh Yemul shares a walks through of a clean layering approach that keeps tests focused on intent while hides Playwright mechanics.

Playwright-BDD: The Missing Link Between Clean BDD and Powerful Test Automation by Kutrala Kumaran

Kutrala Kumaran makes a strong case for Playwright-BDD as a way to keep the readability of Gherkin while ditching the usual Cucumber weight.

Technical Debt in Test Automation by Luis Osvaldo Serna Gomez

Luis details few important pitfalls from as flaky tests to dead code and argues that steady, intentional improvement is what keeps QA systems healthy over time.

How a Simple Python Script Can Reduce Manual Testing Efforts (Without an Automation Framework) by Kalpesh Chavan

Kalpesh Chavan shows how a small Python script replaced hours of repetitive manual checks when consent language changed across multiple workflows.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Our Load Tests Were Not Complete. Until We Combined K6 and Playwright by Gilles Capdivila

In this article Gilles Capdivila explores what happens when backend load tests say everything is fine, but you still don’t know how the app actually feels for users, and shows how combining k6 with Playwright filled that gap.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Awesome QA Prompt: Using AI to Make Testing Work Better

📝 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

• Performance tuning principles and techniques by Google engineers

• The Next Two Years of Software Engineering

• The production bug that made me care about undefined behavior

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Prompt Engineering for Testers — Writing Prompts as Test Artifacts By Gunashekar R

2. Beyond the Page Object Model: Designing Scalable Automation for 2026

3. When Playwright Helps And When It Actively Hides Bugs By Sourojit Das

😂 And Finally,

Catch that error 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 200th 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 issue marks a quiet but meaningful milestone 🎉🥳. Thank you for reading, sharing, and sending thoughtful feedback along the way.

Your support is the reason this newsletter still exists and still matters. Now without further ado, lets dive into this week’s curated links, let me know what your favorite is!

• What Test Engineers Forgot By Saying “Out Of The Box”?

• Beyond the Page Object Model: Designing Scalable Automation for 2026

• When Playwright Helps And When It Actively Hides Bugs

• Week 4 SQL Injection Audit Challenge

• Common mistakes in REST API Testing with Rest Assured

and much more…

📚 Testing

Prompt Engineering for Testers — Writing Prompts as Test Artifacts By Gunashekar R

Nowadays in AI-driven testing, prompts have quietly become first-class test artifacts, carrying the same weight as test cases, assertions, and contracts. Gunashekar R walks us through why we as a testers need prompt-engineering skills, how “test-grade” prompts are structured and versioned, and more.

QA Keeps Testing Rules Nobody Can Explain By George Ukkuru

When was the last time you questioned why are we requiring users to type their passwords twice? George Ukkuru gently dismantles the assumption that it’s about security and explores a broader testing mindset shift, moving from enforcing inherited rules to regularly questioning whether they still earn their place in modern systems.

Bugs Made Me Believe in TDD: Here’s How By Patrick Müller

Patrick Müller shares a reflective journey from sidelining tests to fully embracing TDD and explains how TDD actually works in practice and why writing tests first improves product design and confidence over time.

What Test Engineers Forgot By Saying “Out Of The Box”? By Ravisuriya Eswara

Read Ravisuriya Eswara’s take on how midst of the buzzwords testers often skip the harder, more valuable work of deeply understanding what’s actually inside the system they’re testing.

Improve quality by learning from your process data – a review of “Twenty Things You Need to Know” by Donald J. Wheeler By Mike Harris

Mike Harris connects the theory of Donald Wheeler’s “Twenty Things You Need to Know” to a practical software example, showing how understanding variation can reveal hidden causes behind quality issues.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Beyond the Page Object Model: Designing Scalable Automation for 2026

If not POM then what else? and why? Richa shares a alternative approach by using component-based testing and app-level actions. With practical example, article shows how tests can better mirror real user workflows while staying maintainable as applications evolve.

When Playwright Helps And When It Actively Hides Bugs By Sourojit Das

Very important take on overreliance on browser automation tools. With practical example, Sourojit Das explains why it’s essential to thoroughly test backend logic and business rules first, then use Playwright as a final check to validate user-facing flows.

Automating Push Notification Testing with Appium By Irfan Mujagić

Irfan Mujagić shares a practical, end-to-end tutorial on how to test push notification with Appium, highlights common pitfalls, and shares repeatable pattern you can reuse for real-world notification testing with Appium.

AI and Testing: LangChain Templates By Jeff Nyman

Jeff Nyman continues a hands-on tour of LangChain by easing into prompt templates, showing how simple prompt evolve into reusable, role-aware conversations that can be composed, tested, and eventually chained together.

Common mistakes in REST API Testing with Rest Assured

This article share few common mistakes when designing api test automation with Rest Assured framework and shares how to approach thorough api testing by adding assertions on response content and schema, reusable client configurations, coverage of edge cases.

Custom JUnit 5 Extensions for Testing By Elias Nogueira

Elias Nogueira details how JUnit 5 custom extensions can help you hook into the test lifecycle to handle setup, retries, or infrastructure checks outside the test logic.

Extending My Agentic SDLC Demo: Adding Vibium Test Support Alongside Playwright by Beth Marshall

Beth Marshall is running an exciting experiment running Playwright and the newer Vibium side by side in the same codebase.

Why Appium Tests Pass Locally But Fail in CI By Om Narayan

Om Narayan digs into why Appium tests so often behave perfectly on your machine and then fall apart in CI, walking through seven concrete environment differences that quietly change timing, state, and behaviour.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Volume Testing: Simple, Useful, and Too Often Forgotten By Mykola Korkoza

Mykola Korkoza shares a practical walkthrough of how to plan, run, and interpret volume tests.

🔍 Performance Testing

🔒 Security

Week 4 SQL Injection Audit Challenge

This is a hands-on deep dive into spotting SQL injection risks through code review alone, using 66 exercises that sharpen your security testing.

🔍 Security Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Android Use — Open-source library for AI agents to control native Android apps

awesome-claude-skills — A curated list of awesome Claude Skills, resources, and tools for customizing Claude AI workflows — particularly Claude Code

📝 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

• The Prompt Engineering Playbook for Programmers

• 75% of the people on Tailwind’s engineering team lost their jobs

• Designing Team Traditions That Actually Fit Your Team

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. AI Testing Skills: The Evolution Beyond RAG and MCP by Slawomir Radzyminski

2. Building a Scalable Automation Framework with Playwright + TypeScript by Rajesh Yemul

3. Testing for Quality, Betting on Value by Jeff Nyman

😂 And Finally,

How different people reacts to "Bug" 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the first issue of Software Testing Notes for the year. Hope you had a good break and enjoyed the the holidays.

Thanks for being here and starting the year with me. I intend to make this newsletter as your one reliable place to stay updated on software testing.

I have some very interesting links for you to read this week:

• Testing for Quality, Betting on Value

• Testing the Untestable: Why 2026 is the Year QA Embraces Uncertainty

• AI Testing Skills: The Evolution Beyond RAG and MCP

• TPU vs GPU: Real-World Performance Testing for LLM Training on Google Cloud

• Testing Methods: Accessible Authentication (Minimum)

and more…

📚 Testing

Testing for Quality, Betting on Value by Jeff Nyman

Where testing genuinely adds value, where it can’t help at all? Jeff Nyman explains that while testing is great at reducing technical risk, but it can’t save a product that’s too afraid to take meaningful creative or strategic bets. Now, what does that mean exactly? read the article and find out.

The dirty secrets of agile by Stuart Thomas

What “successful” sprints really look like in a Agile setup? Stuart Thomas gently challenges the comfort of perfectly green sprint boards, arguing that teams who always finish everything may be playing it too safe or quietly burning out.

Testing Shapes Reality by Keith Klain

When AI generates our tests, what version of reality are we training ourselves and our organisations to believe in?

A must read article from Keith Klain’s take on how cheap, abundant test generation can quietly distort judgment and inflate confidence.

Testing the Untestable: Why 2026 is the Year QA Embraces Uncertainty by Neil Matillano

Neil Matillano reflects on how AI’s rapid integration is pushing QA into unfamiliar territory, where unpredictability forces a shift from neat pass/fail checks to more nuanced judgments of quality, confidence, and trust.

Why 100 Percent Test Coverage is Not Possible — Lessons from Testing Banking and Healthcare Systems by Oladapo Aiyenitaju

Oladapo Aiyenitaju shares hard-won lessons from banking and healthcare where “all green” test suites let serious risks slip through. This article challenges the obsession of chasing 100% coverage.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

AI Testing Skills: The Evolution Beyond RAG and MCP by Slawomir Radzyminski

Slawomir Radzyminski shares how AI evolution has unlocked a new way of thinking about testing done by AI agents rather than scripts. The article makes a strong case for “skills” as the missing layer and shows how they can power practical use cases like web and API testing without turning prompts into a dumping ground.

Stop Apologizing for Flaky Tests by Gil Zilberfeld

Gil Zilberfeld takes a refreshing swing at flaky tests, reframing them as a symptom of deeper design and leadership problems rather than something testers should keep apologising for.

🧩Runtime Snapshots #8 — From Bug Reports to Automated Regression: A QA Pipeline

This article makes a strong case for upgrading vague bug reports into something far more concrete by capturing the actual DOM state. It walks through how runtime snapshots can speed up debugging, make AI assistance genuinely useful, and even power smarter Playwright-based regression and accessibility checks without the usual flakiness.

Building a Scalable Automation Framework with Playwright + TypeScript by Rajesh Yemul

In this article, Rajesh Yemul walks us through page objects, shared actions, and clean test structure using Playwright + Typescript automation framework.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

TPU vs GPU: Real-World Performance Testing for LLM Training on Google Cloud by Jubin Soni

Performance testing on GPUs? Jubin Soni has shared a thoughtful deep dive into the real trade-offs between NVIDIA GPUs and Google’s TPUs when training large language models, going well beyond raw benchmarks into architecture, interconnects, tooling, and cost.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

Testing Methods: Accessible Authentication (Minimum) by Dennis Deacon

In this article, Dennis Deacon unpacks WCAG 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication by zooming in on a simple idea with big consequences: login flows shouldn’t test memory, cognition, or patience just to prove who you are.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

WebPerf Snippets — A curated list of snippets to get Web Performance metrics to use in the browser console or as snippets on Chrome DevTools.

Element to LLM - DOM Capture for AI — Capture DOM elements with full context for AI debugging 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

• The Decision Triangle: a simple way to improve decision making

• 21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google

• Why Engineers Hate Their Managers (And What to Do About It)

😂 And Finally,

Testers when they have to test vibe coded app 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 198th 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.

As 2025 comes to an end, this will the last issue of the year.

As we did last year, lets celebrate festivities with our “And Finally” section of this year. Memes shared in “And Finally” always lands among the top 10 most-clicked links, I’m sure you will enjoy them.

Have a great new year 🎉,
Pritesh

😂 And Finally,

When you write tests In JavaScript 🤣

Testers in Public V/S Testers with each other 🤣

No **new** bugs found: The key here is NEW 🤣

This is how a real tester truly thinks.

This code is testing me 🤣

throw PoopOverflowException 🤣

Just testers messing with Developers 🤣

The reason why every production breaks 🤣

When you code works but you don't know how 🤣

What is Error driven development 🤣

Test passing 100% with 0% code coverage 🤣

10 years Sr QA/Test Lead 🤣

It’s all about those Green Checkboxes

Enterprise App Testing in a nutshell 🤣

Bingo Of Crappy IT Processes 🤣

The Tests Are Mocking Me 🤣

Let's See Who Really Caused This Bug 🤣

Devs watching QA test the product 🤣

Five Hours after Reproducing the Bug 🤣

How IT people see each other 🤣

In the mind of a SOLO tester 🤣

Dev and QA: Forever and ever and ever 🤣

The Unbearable Truth About Testing 🤣

Too many vibes, not enough tests 🤣

Debugging with AI just got "scarry" real 🫤

When Vibe Coders fixes a Bug with AI 🤣

The Friday Afternoon Jira Massacre 🤣

AI Went Rogue and Deleted Production Database Then Hid It And Lied About It 😱

Tester discovering edge cases the developer never imagined possible 🤣

How do testers spend time in QA 🤣

Friday Deployments: The Real Endgame 🤣

Why fix the code when you can just make Bugs Illegal? 🤣

The AI Developer's Dilemma and Tester's Nightmare 🤣

Dev says: It’s a feature. Tester says: Show me the proof. 🤣

Vibe testing in Progress 🤣

The Old Tale: Bug VS Feature 🤣

The Skeptical QA Manager's Death Stare 🤣

testing in production 🤣

Universal Truths Of Software Development🤣

What we will do when AI takes our Jobs 🤣

When Test Count matters more then Quality 🤣

Missed Test Coverage 🤣

How software testers flirt 🤣

A Christmas Gift 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 197th 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 if Your Test Data Could Tell Your Framework HOW to Run?

• Test as Transformation – AI, Risk, and the Business of Reality

• Iterate Dynamic Values in JMeter Using Extractors and Controllers

• The Most Important QA Metrics That Actually Improve Team Performance

• Mastering Cypress Network Requests & API Testing: A Complete Guide

and more…

✨ Featured

How to Drop Automation Build Failures by 40%

Some teams spend nearly 50% of QA time maintaining scripts. BrowserStack’s new Self-Healing Agent remediates broken locators at runtime, keeps pipelines green instantly, and auto-proposes permanent code updates for later. Compatible with Selenium, Playwright, and Appium. See how you can drop build failures by 40% here!

Explore Self-Healing Agent!

📚 Testing

Test as Transformation – AI, Risk, and the Business of Reality by Keith Klain

Keith Klain shares interesting insights into how testing should evolve as AI becomes norm in Software Products. Keith argues that testing is no longer just about finding bugs, but about protecting businesses from legal trouble, unfair AI decisions, and hidden risks that automation can’t see.

How to Deal with Stressful Deadlines as a QA by Higor Mesquita

This piece is a calm, experience-backed look at handling QA under deadline pressure. If you’ve ever felt that end-of-sprint squeeze, you’ll find Higor Mesquita’s practical guidance on prioritising risk, using automation wisely, and making peace with the realities of shipping software.

The Most Important QA Metrics That Actually Improve Team Performance by Marina Jordão

Marina Jordão talks about how the right QA metrics can sharpen priorities, reduce risk, and spark better conversations across the team.

How QA Teams Validate Highly Specialised AI (Without Becoming Scientists Overnight) by Katrina Collins

This is a thoughtful deep dive by Katrina Collins into how QA teams can confidently test AI systems in specialist domains without pretending to be experts, using a clear split between what QA owns and where subject matter experts must step in.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Building Reliability in AI-Generated Tests by Pravesh Ramachandran

AI-generated tests feel impressively fast but can become quietly unreliable very quickly too. Pravesh Ramachandran argues that speed is meaningless without trust in what those tests actually cover and provides a walkthrough of a practical framework to make AI testing usable in the real world.

Mastering Cypress Network Requests & API Testing: A Complete Guide by Anuradha Liyanage

Want to lean how to do API testing with Cypress? Take a look at this guide by Anuradha Liyanage sharing practical examples of intercepting, mocking, and validating network calls with Cypress.

How AI Can Tell You Why Your Tests Failed (And How to Fix Them)

This piece explores a neat way to take the pain out of CI failures by letting AI read long, noisy test logs and turn them into clear, human-friendly explanations with suggested fixes. It’s a practical walkthrough of wiring that into a CI pipeline, with the quiet observation that most “mysterious” test failures are simple once someone (or something) actually reads the logs for you.

I Built Selenium Self-Healing Tests with AI That Fix Themselves (Here’s How)

This article walks through a clever, hands-on approach to self-healing Selenium tests, using local AI to automatically fix broken locators when the UI changes.

What if Your Test Data Could Tell Your Framework HOW to Run, Not Just WHAT to Test? by Sachin Koirala

Sachin Koirala introduces a smart twist on data-driven testing, showing how test data can control execution behavior itself, not just inputs.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

How to Iterate Dynamic Values in JMeter Using Regex/JSON Extractor and While Controller

This article walks through a neat way to loop over dynamically extracted values in JMeter, using a While Controller and a couple of built-in functions to handle responses.

🔍 Performance Testing

🌞 Accessibility

5 reasons why WCAG AA compliance does not mean your website is accessible by Craig Abbott

How often do testers stop at “passes WCAG” instead of asking “is this actually usable? Craig Abbott gives concrete, real-world examples where something can technically pass audits yet still be frustrating or unusable for real users.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

playwright-smart-reporter — An intelligent Playwright HTML reporter with AI-powered failure analysis, flakiness detection, and performance regression alerts.

Dev Browser — A browser automation plugin for Claude Code that lets Claude control your web browser to close the loop on your development workflows.

react-native-bugbubble — Monitor network requests, WebSocket events, console logs, and analytics events in real-time with a beautiful, draggable UI.

📝 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

• 21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google

• Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?

• How good engineers write bad code at big companies

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Anti-Patterns in Playwright People Don’t Realize They’re Doing by Gunashekar R

2. The Complete Guide to RAG Quality Assurance: Metrics, Testing, and Automation by Irfan Mujagić

3. How to Build a QA Team Engineers Actually Want to Work With by David Ingraham

😂 And Finally,

A Christmas Gift 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 196th 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:

• The Complete Guide to RAG Quality Assurance: Metrics, Testing, and Automation

• Testing types - beyond definitions

• Run Cypress autotests in parallel for Allure report

• Orchestrating our UI test suite with Maestro

• Advanced Techniques for Real-World Performance testing with K6

and more…

✨ Featured

AI That Actually Understands Accessibility Testing (And Does It For You)

Here’s the problem with automated accessibility testing: your scanner says “alt text present,” but a screen reader reads out “image_final_v3.png.”

BrowserStack’s A11y Issue Detection Agent brings human-like intelligence into your workflow. It doesn’t just check for alt-text, it understands context. It can identify decorative vs. functional images, verify logical focus order, and more. It’s like having a WCAG expert built into your testing process.

Run a free accessibility scan here!

📚 Testing

Why aren’t we Talking about Shift Right in Quality Engineering? by Callum Akehurst-Ryan

Callum Akehurst-Ryan shares an interesting look at how conversations around quality tend to fixate on shifting left while quietly ignoring the learning that comes from production release.

How to Build a QA Team Engineers Actually Want to Work With by David Ingraham

David Ingraham takes a thoughtful look at why quality often breaks down and how including QAs from the start can help with better feedback, stronger automation, and shared ownership by making quality a cultural habit.

Testing types - beyond definitions by Joep Schuurkes

Agreeing on rigid test definitions matters far less than staying curious and talking through what we actually intend to test. Joep Schuurkes does a nice job showing how context, culture, and even team habits all shape what we think about test types.

Quality is a Commercial Decision: The Case for Pragmatism by Stuart Thomas

This reflection from Stuart Thomas digs into the tension between aiming for zero defects and still needing to ship features, landing on a more pragmatic view of quality.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Test Automation Framework or Test Automation Solution? by Oleksandr Romanov

Oleksandr Romanov takes a walks through the difference between a true reusable framework and a project-specific solution, showing that automation isn’t just about tooling but understanding which problem you’re actually trying to solve.

Orchestrating our UI test suite with Maestro by Prateek Prasad

By the end of the migration we reached 99%+ reliability, 50% cost reduction, and a 4x runtime speed up.

Prateek Prasad shows how that migrated from Espresso to Maestro and what kind of improvements they observed along the way.

The Complete Guide to RAG Quality Assurance: Metrics, Testing, and Automation by Irfan Mujagić

Learn how to test RAG pipelines with this great article by Irfan Mujagić. The article provides a detailed walks through of building sentence-window retrieval, smarter reranking, and automated scoring with the RAG.

Let AI Write Your Pytest Suite: A Practical Guide for SDETs by Sh Yin (Shene) Lim

Sh Yin (Shene) Lim explores how pairing OpenAI with Pytest can give API testing a helpful boost, letting AI draft the initial test cases while you focus on the parts that still need real engineering judgement.

Run Cypress autotests in parallel for Allure report by Ivan Smolyarov

Ivan Smolyarov details a way to speed up Cypress runs by adding simple parallelisation. The article also contains real world example of how it works and integrated with Allure reporting.

Kotest : Modern Testing in Kotlin: Test Styles, Mocking and Writing Tests by Nimit Raja

Nimit explains how to use Kotest and MockK to write Kotlin based automated tests for Android apps.

Anti-Patterns in Playwright People Don’t Realize They’re Doing by Gunashekar R

This guide dives into the subtle ways Playwright tests can quietly go wrong, from brittle .click() calls to hidden performance killers like hard waits and redundant reloads.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Elevating Your K6 Tests: Advanced Techniques for Real-World Performance

From dynamic flows and conditional logic to custom metrics, thresholds, and xk6 extensions, this article shares a deep dive into making your load tests smarter, scalable, and CI/CD-ready.

The Day I Stopped Copy-Pasting Postman Tests into k6 by Ameya N.

Ameya N. shows how to turn existing Postman collections into full-blown k6 performance tests without rewriting a single line of code, all running seamlessly in GitHub Actions..

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

RedCoffee — is a Python Based CLI Tool that generates PDF Reports for analysis done using SonarQube Community Edition. Read more here

talk2dom — Locate web elements using natural language. Powered by LLM for reliable UI automation.

📝 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

• Tech predictions for 2026 and beyond

• The privacy nightmare of browser fingerprinting

• The Performance Inequality Gap, 2026

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. The First 5 Minutes of Bug Investigation: How to Do It Right by Vladimir Josifoski

2. Playwright Pro Tip: Stop Digging! Auto-Attach API Request/Response Data to Your HTML Reports. by Thananjayan Rajasekaran

3. Quality = Engineered + Experienced - explained with fountain pens. by Maaike Brinkhof

😂 And Finally,

How software testers flirt 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 195th 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:

• JMX Orchestrator: The LoadRunner Controller JMeter Never Had

• How to use Appium Inspector along with Windows Inspector

• Want to be a better Quality Engineer: Lose the Ego

• The First 5 Minutes of Bug Investigation: How to Do It Right

• Why Parallel Runs Become Slower Instead of Faster

  and more…

📚 Testing

Quality = Engineered + Experienced - explained with fountain pens. by Maaike Brinkhof

Another great article by Maaike Brinkhof detailing that while we can carefully build the parts of a system, the real measure of quality lives in how people experience the product, a dimension that can’t be engineered into existence.

Want to be a better Quality Engineer: Lose the Ego by Gil Zilberfeld

This article makes the case that testing AI features means testing chains of model calls, not isolated responses. Gil Zilberfeld introduces the AI Quality Funnel as a way to manage that complexity and walks through a practical, step-by-step approach for evaluating each layer of an AI workflow.

The First 5 Minutes of Bug Investigation: How to Do It Right by Vladimir Josifoski

What goes through your mind when you encounter a bug? Vladimir Josifoski shares insights about how the crucial first minutes of bug investigation is.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

How to use Appium Inspector along with Windows Inspector by rohan dudam

Automating Desktop app? rohan dudam shares how Windows Inspector and Appium Inspector complement each other when automating Windows desktop apps.

Why Parallel Runs Become Slower Instead of Faster by Gunashekar R

Gunashekar R digs into why scaling test runners often makes pipelines slower instead of faster and explains how mature teams solve them with isolated data, load-aware infra, and gradual scaling.

Building a Scalable Python Test Automation Framework for Automotive Projects by Naveen Daniel Kennedy

The article compares Robot Framework, Pytest, BDD, and hybrid setups, showing where each fits from infotainment to ECU tests. This is a really good starting point if you are working on automotive infostack testing.

Playwright Pro Tip: Stop Digging! Auto-Attach API Request/Response Data to Your HTML Reports. by Thananjayan Rajasekaran

Learn how to automatically capturing every request and response and attaching them as clean JSON files inside the HTML report. Thananjayan Rajasekaran just made API failures much faster to understand.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Simulating slow network speeds for mobile app testing using your laptop as a hotspot by Avinash Shetty

You won’t believe when the network gets unstable, how much app behaviour changes. Avinash Shetty shows a simple way to recreate those conditions using Ubuntu’s built-in traffic shaping tools. While JMeter does this with simple configuration, it’s a neat way to simulate network throttling.

JMX Orchestrator: The LoadRunner Controller JMeter Never Had by Jenish Patel

Jenish Patel created a web utility that that scales entire scenarios, calculates TPS automatically, switches execution modes instantly, and edits Thread Groups from one clean interface, all while keeping every JMX file fully local.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Playwright Utils — A collection of utilities for Playwright tests at SEON Technologies, designed to make testing more efficient and maintainable.

JMX Orchestrator Pro — switches execution modes instantly, and edits Thread Groups from one clean interface, all while keeping every JMX file fully local and secure

📝 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

• Councils of agents

• Architectural debt is not just technical debt

• Rethinking Code Quality Analysis

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Fixing Failing Tests Automatically with Playwright’s New Healer Agent by Debbie O’Brien

2. Why do so many testers have an identity crisis? by Maaike Brinkhof

3. Why I Chose to Be a Director of Quality Engineering (Not QA) by Jessica M.

😂 And Finally,

Missed Test Coverage 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 194th 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:

• Fixing Failing Tests Automatically with Playwright’s New Healer Agent

• Managing Risks of Generative AI in Software Testing

• Playwright MCP - Security Best Practices

• Building a Scalable, Serverless API Load Testing Platform on AWS

• Setting Up a Pytest Testing Framework

and more…

✨ Featured

AI Agent That Actually Reviews Your UI Changes

Tired of visual tests flagging every tiny pixel shift? BrowserStack Percy’s new Visual Review Agent filters out noise, highlights only meaningful UI changes, and explains issues in plain English.

Set review rules, track build metrics, and review 3x faster without alert fatigue. Try it in your builds today.

Get started for free

📚 Testing

Why do so many testers have an identity crisis? by Maaike Brinkhof

Maaike Brinkhof wrote an great article about why many testers feel insecure about their role and how this insecurity usually comes from how others misunderstand testing.

The Search for the Real In Software Quality and Testing by Keith Klain

Through stories of abstract art, creative process, and the rise of AI-driven “automation fixes,” Keith Klain makes the case for how real testing depends on intuition, empathy, and interpretation rather than counting test checks.

Why I Chose to Be a Director of Quality Engineering (Not QA) by Jessica M.

This article by Jessica M. explains how Quality Engineering expands the tester’s skill set into systems thinking, tooling, observability, and collaboration.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Fixing Failing Tests Automatically with Playwright’s New Healer Agent by Debbie O’Brien

Debbie O’Brien shows how Playwright’s new Healer Agent can diagnose, repair, and rerun failing tests on its own, turning hours of maintenance into a background task.

Building a Fully Online Data-Driven Automation Framework Using Robot Framework & Google Sheets by Shailesh W.

Shailesh W. shows how to utilize Google’s Apps Script to turn your Sheets into a simple REST API and feeding this test data to Robot Framework for automation testing.

The Democratization of Test Automation by Josh Grant

Josh Grant reflects on conversations from Targeting Quality 2025 and argues that the real innovation over the past two decades hasn’t been flashy new features but the democratization of tooling that lets teams of any size adopt end-to-end testing.

How to Get Developers in Your Team to Contribute to Your Test Automation by Nicola Lindgren

We often say that quality is a shared responsibility. But how we can put this actually in practice? Nicola Lindgren walks us through practical steps that can help move test automation into everyday development work between testers and developers.

Patrol: The Flutter Testing Framework That Changes Everything by Hitesh Meghwal

Hitesh Meghwal takes a look at Flutter testing and introduces us to Patrol, a framework that finally brings native-level UI automation into the Flutter world.

The Basics of Gherkin Syntax: Writing Clear and Understandable Test Scenarios by Marta Rakowska

This piece by Marta Rakowska shares a walks through the essentials of the Gherkin syntax, the purpose of each keyword, and shows how real examples evolve into living documentation that helps create automated tests.

Managing Risks of Generative AI in Software Testing by santosh kumar

santosh kumar explains how hallucinations, shaky reasoning, and hidden biases can slip into AI-generated tests and why understanding these pitfalls is essential for using GenAI safely and responsibly.

How to Test Generative Models? The Importance of QA in This Process by Marisa B.

Testing generative models is a complex work. Instead of simple pass/fail checks, Marisa B. argues for evaluating coherence, variability, safety, and broader behavioral patterns using semantic, statistical, and controlled-variability techniques.

Setting Up a Pytest Testing Framework 01 — The Basics of the Basics by Paulo V.

Wanna learn how to do automation testing with Pytest? This article by Paulo V. is a great starting point.

Also read 2nd article detailing how to setup Logging and Reporting with Pytest.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Automating Front-End Performance Testing — Lighthouse by Lahiru Rathnaweera

Lahiru Rathnaweera describes how to turn your Google Lighthouse front-end performance testing into a one click pipeline that can handle dozens of URLs, extracts best and worst results, and publishes everything directly into Confluence.

Building a Scalable, Serverless API Load Testing Platform on AWS by Vamsi Krishna Gattupalli

This article dives into how a serverless setup on AWS can transform load testing from an infrastructure-heavy chore into a lightweight, automated workflow. Vamsi Krishna Gattupalli share how to set up large-scale distributed testing without servers to maintain or costs that linger.

🔍 Performance Testing

🔒 Security

Playwright MCP - Security Best Practices by Slawomir Radzyminski

As letting AI drive a real browser through Playwright MCP is getting popular. Slawomir Radzyminski takes a look at the security trade-offs that come with it and shares a walks through of practical steps you can take to make it more secure.

🔍 Security Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

happyDeliver — An open-source email deliverability testing platform that analyzes test emails and provides detailed deliverability reports with scoring.

Combot — is a Compose testing library designed to simplify testing and automation of UI components in Jetpack Compose. It allows developers to easily write tests for Compose components.

📝 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

• The New Calculus of AI-based Coding

• How I Use Every Claude Code Feature

• Reproducing the AWS Outage Race Condition with a Model Checker

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. Judgment Is the New QA Skill: How Testers and SDETs Can Thrive in the Age of AI by Ryan Petersen

2. Cousin locators in Playwright by Zoe Clegg

3. Using AI in Playwright Tests by Philip Fong

😂 And Finally,

When Test Count matters more then Quality 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 193th 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:

• Using Systems Thinking to Solve Complex QA Problems

• Judgment Is the New QA Skill: How Testers and SDETs Can Thrive in the Age of AI

• Cousin locators in Playwright

• Stress Testing LLMs for Accuracy — Finding the Breakpoint

• Synthetic Data Generator

and more…

✨ Featured

Share Your Voice in the State of Testing 2026

The State of Testing 2026 survey by PractiTest & Tea-Time with Testers is live!

Now in its 12th year, this global, highly cited report reveals key QA trends: from tooling and strategy to AI and careers. Take 10 minutes to share your experience and get early access to the full report:

👉🏻 Take the Survey

📚 Testing

When AI Ships the Bug: Who Pays? by Ryan Craven

AI testing has been in a buzz lately. But what happens when AI-generated tests miss critical bugs? Who’s responsible when when AI tools approve broken code? Through real-world cases, Ryan Craven explores how liability is quietly shifting from AI vendors to individual engineers and how it introduces a legal and ethical gray zones.

Judgment Is the New QA Skill: How Testers and SDETs Can Thrive in the Age of AI by Ryan Petersen

If you want to move beyond automation and become the kind of tester whose thinking can’t be replaced by AI, this article is for you. Ryan Petersen shares how great QA engineers apply human judgment to focus on what truly matters, define constraints and build trust.

How I Use Systems Thinking to Solve Complex QA Problems by Abhishek Verma

Instead of chasing broken tests or misconfigured environments, Abhishek Verma shows how mapping dependencies, identifying feedback loops, and asking deeper “why” questions can transform debugging into true system diagnosis.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Cousin locators in Playwright by Zoe Clegg

How to reliably target the right element when multiple identical components exist on a page? Zoe Clegg introduces the idea of “cousin locators” instead of relying on fragile indexes or dynamic IDs, using Playwright’s filtering capabilities.

Cypress Fixtures and Custom Commands: Streamlining Test Automation by Anuradha Liyanage

As your Cypress test suite scales, keeping tests clean and reusable becomes essential. Anuradha Liyanage shows how fixtures and custom commands help achieve that by separating data from logic and turning repeated steps into reusable functions.

Dictionary of Flaky Tests by Andrey Enin

From probabilistic flakiness scores to systemic flakiness and order dependencies, Andrey Enin takes a deep dive and unpacks the full vocabulary behind flaky tests.

How to Use JSON, ENV, and Dynamic Locators to Keep Tests Truly Data-Driven by Gunashekar R

Gunashekar R shares a practical guide to transforming monolith test scripts into a flexible, future-proof test framework by separating data, configuration, and logic using JSON files, environment variables, and dynamic locators.

Testing While Developing by Kevin Julián Martínez Escobar

This is a 5 part series detailing Test While Developing (TWD), a lightweight tool that lets you write and run tests directly inside your development environment.

Kevin walks us through setting up a small project, installing TWD, and adding its interactive sidebar to see your tests run live as you code.

Read next parts, (Part 2): Selectors, Assertions, and User Events, (Part 3): Mocking API Requests, (Part 4): Running Tests in CI, (Part 5): Collecting Coverage

Using AI in Playwright Tests by Philip Fong

Philip Fong explores an experimental approach to blending Playwright testing with AI-powered visual assertions by building a custom utility using OpenAI’s API to let tests verify UI elements directly from screenshots.

Synthetic Data Generator by Samwel Oliver

Samwel Oliver introduces DataGen, a Python library that creates realistic synthetic datasets for testing and analysis.

🔍 Test Automation

💨 Performance

Stress Testing LLMs for Accuracy — Finding the Breakpoint by Karthic Muthuvelu

Instead of just measuring response time or throughput, Karthic Muthuvelu introduces a framework called “Accuracy Under Load” that benchmarks when an LLM’s reasoning quality starts to decline as concurrency rises.

🔍 Performance Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

TWD — bringing tests directly into your development environment. Instead of running tests in a separate terminal, you can see results instantly in your browser’s sidebar while you code.

Datagen — A Python library for generating realistic synthetic datasets for testing, analytics, and machine learning experiments.

XPathSense — is an AI Automation Agent that intelligently scans web pages, identifies UI elements, and generates stable, human-readable XPaths and Page Object code using advanced AI models like Gemini or OpenAI.

📝 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

• Running 1:1s for Engineers

• What Actually Happens When You Press ‘Send’ to ChatGPT

• Scaling Engineering Teams: Lessons from Google, Facebook, and Netflix

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. The New QA Mindset: Testing AI and LLMs by Vladimir Josifoski

2. Model-Based Testing with Playwright by Eleonora Belova

3. Switching from Web to Desktop Automation: 5 Things That Surprised Me by Darrold Dorsey

😂 And Finally,

What we will do when AI takes our Jobs 🤣

📨 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)

Welcome to the 192th 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:

• The New QA Mindset: Testing AI and LLMs

• Switching from Web to Desktop Automation

• Scaling Mobile UI Testing with AI

• Penetration Testing vs. Red Teaming

• Model-Based Testing with Playwright

  and more…

✨ Featured

How QA teams are using AI agents to ship faster in 2025

Join leaders from GitHub, Nasdaq, and Deutsche Telekom and more on Nov 12 as they share how AI agents are transforming their testing workflows.

You’ll see 20+ AI agents in action, from generating test cases to fixing failures automatically, and learn the strategies helping top teams ship faster in 2025.

Save your free spot now!

📚 Testing

The New QA Mindset: Testing AI and LLMs by Vladimir Josifoski

Testing AI system brings it’s own challenges as they often behave unpredictably and outputs can be different every time. Vladimir Josifoski recommends testers to shift from verifying correctness to evaluating trust, bias, and consistency.

There are no bad testers only bad systems by Anne-Marie Charrett

Anne-Marie Charrett encourages teams and leaders to focus on improving processes, collaboration, and support structures so that quality can emerge naturally.

AI will replace testers jobs, are we all doomed? by Steve Watson

This article by Steve Watson highlights how testers are uniquely positioned to question bias, validate data, and ensure fairness in AI-driven systems, making testers more vital than ever in this evolving landscape.

The Bug Detection Roller Coaster: A Carnival of Code and Shadows by Maire Grant

This was a really interesting piece to read. Maire Grant compares the thrill of bug hunting to a haunted roller coaster ride, and explores how bug detection process can evolve.

🔍 Software Testing

⚙️ Automation

Switching from Web to Desktop Automation: 5 Things That Surprised Me by Darrold Dorsey

Web and desktop automation are two completely different beasts. From personal experience, Darrold Dorsey shares five big lessons learned while switching from Selenium-based web testing to automating WPF desktop apps.

Model-Based Testing with Playwright by Eleonora Belova

This post by Eleonora Belova walks through how combining Playwright with Model-Based Testing can make end-to-end tests more structured and maintainable.

Scaling Mobile UI Testing with AI by Atakan Karslı

Atakan Karslı shares a practical, real-world case study in scaling AI-assisted testing Learn how Trendyol doubled their UI test coverage in a year by designing consistent structures that let AI generate, run, and even fix tests using Maestro MCP.

Make Enriched E2E API Tests Reports by Andrey Enin

Andrey Enin shares a practical guide on how to make complex end to end api tests easier to debug by improving test report readability using detailed logging, clear assertions, and traceability.

How To Build Stable Appium Tests Using Step-Level Retry by Josphine J.

If you are doing mobile test automation with Appium, Josphine J. shares how to implement step-level retries to reduce flakiness of the tests suits by reattempting only the parts that fail due to timing or platform quirks.

Speaking of flakiness, Gabriel Chege has also written about How to Handle Flaky Playwright Tests Using a Simple Retry Utility Function.

🔍 Test Automation

🌞 Accessibility

Testing Methods: Reflow by Dennis Deacon

Another accessibility testing gem by Dennis Deacon. This article explores WCAG 1.4.10 Reflow, and compares automated, AI-driven, and manual testing approaches, explaining how each helps detect layout and accessibility issues.

🔍 Accessibility Testing

🔒 Security

Penetration Testing vs. Red Teaming by Aviral Srivastava

This article explores the differences between penetration testing and red teaming. Aviral Srivastava explains how pentesting and red teaming differ in their approach of security testing.

🔍 Security Testing

🛠️ Resources & Tools

Browserable — An open source browser automation library that allows you to build browser agents that can navigate sites, fill out forms, click buttons, extract information, and more.

Price Per Token — An up-to-date pricing reference for major LLM APIs including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, and more, allowing you to compare token costs across different AI models and find the best value.

📝 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

• AWS Outage: A Single Cloud Region Shouldn’t Take Down the World. But It Did.

• An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now

• SQL Anti-Patterns You Should Avoid

⭐ LAST WEEK’S MOST READ

1. AI-Powered Test Automation: How Playwright Agents Plan, Write, and Fix Tests for Us by Nikola

2. Self-Healing Scripts in QA Workflows by Ryan Craven

3. AI + Chrome DevTools MCP: Trace, Analyse, Fix Performance by Slawomir Radzyminski

😂 And Finally,

Universal Truths Of Software Development🤣

📨 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)