Zhimin Zhan
Bio
Test automation & CT coach, author, speaker and award-winning software developer.
A top writer on Test Automation, with 150+ articles featured in leading software testing newsletters.
Stories (98/0)
Story: “What is the Most Challenging in E2E Test Automation?”, Part 2
Continue from Part 1. This is an Important Realization but often Neglected “Test Maintenance” is the primary effort of test automation, and shall be the base for any decisions. Sadly, this is often neglected in practice, like in this story. For example, many software companies over-emphasized test creation when choosing a test automation framework/tool. Many managers and tech leads fell in the sales pitches of bad and expensive test automation tools, such as QTP and Ranorex, claiming “How easy to create automated tests using record-n-playback or assistance of its Object Identification GUI Utility”. History proved them wrong. The code-based (and free) approach, such as Selenium WebDriver and Playwright, has dominated test automation since 2011.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Story: “What is the Most Challenging in E2E Test Automation?”, Part 1
This is one of the Stories series. The Story In 2016, I worked in a large tech company (over 500 IT staff, considered a large one in my city) as a test automation engineer (contractor). One day, the newly-joined testing director, S, who is responsible for the overall testing process in the company, invited all software testers (~70) to a meeting.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Cross Browser Testing Clarified
This article is one of the “IT Terminology Clarified” series. Cross-Browser Testing (CBT) is to verify the web app in different browsers. Many software companies conducted CBT in some forms around 2014, as there was no absolute dominant (> 60%) browser at that time. And we know that Microsoft Internet Explorer does not confirm the W3C standard strictly.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Why I don’t use Jira and Confluence at all for my software development? Part 2
Continue from Part 1. Solid evidence of “Jira and its alike is non-essential for Agile Software Development” People would assume companies depend more on Jira or similar tools for working remotely(due to Covid). But Atlassian's share dropped 73% last year. Two other Jira alternatives performed even worse, Monday.com: 83%, and Asana: 77%.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Why I don’t use Jira and Confluence at all for my software development? Part 1
It seems that Jira and Confluence are used everywhere within the software industry. As an owner of several commercial software products, I don’t use Jira or Confluence, have never had the need and do not see any benefits from them.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
User Story Card Clarified, Part 2
Continue from Part 1. Card Write user stories on index cards, not in a digital management system such as JIRA. If a user story (written by a business analyst) is turned redundant or to be included in another one, you tear it off. If one user story seems too abstract, break it into multiple user stories, i.e., tear it off and write it down in several new index cards. You don’t need to log on to JIRA to delete it or drag it to the ‘backlog’. By doing that, some might probably worry about velocity…, etc.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
AgileWay Continuous Testing Grading
(This article is an excerpt from my book “Practical Continuous Testing”) DEFINITIONS AgileWay Means "do things in an agile way", also the company I founded in 2006 when I discovered the revolutionary way (daily releases enabled by automated end-2-end testing) to do software development.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Software Engineer Choices: Permanent Employee vs Contractor vs Micro-ISV, Part -1: Permanent Employee
Here is a quick explanation of three work choices for a software engineer: Permanent Employee: a full-time job. Employees work in and are part of the business. Contractor: offer IT services to a company for a short period. Contractors are running their own business. Micro-ISV: is an independent software vendor with fewer than 10 or even just one software developer, i.e. Work for yourself. In the context of this article, Mirco-ISV is a one-person software business.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01
Benefits of E2E Test Automation & Continuous Testing (Part 6: to Happy Customers)
E2E Test Automation & Continuous Testing (enables software teams to push software updates to production daily, not fake CI/CD talks. Check out “Continuous Integration at Facebook” and AgileWay Continuous Testing Grading) is the heart of the software development process. It benefits all stakeholders from a software project.
By Zhimin Zhan10 months ago in 01