Automation in Testing Three Day Course

A fantastic new three-day training course which can be taught by Richard Bradshaw, Mark Winteringham or with both of us! This course is all about Automation in Testing, specifically software testing.

What Do We Mean By ‘Automation in Testing’

Automation in Testing is a new namespace designed by Richard Bradshaw and Mark Winteringham. The use of automation within testing is changing, and in our opinion, existing terminology such as Test Automation is tarnished and no longer fit for purpose. So instead of having lengthy discussions about what Test Automation is, we’ve created our own namespace which provides a holistic experienced view on how you can and should be utilising automation in your testing.

Why You Should Take This Course

Automation is everywhere, it’s popularity and uptake has rocketed in recent years and it’s showing little sign of slowing down. So in order to remain relevant, you need to know how to code, right? No. While knowing how to code is a great tool in your toolbelt, there is far more to automation than writing code.

Automation doesn’t tell you:

What tests you should create
What data your tests require
What layer in your application you should write them at
What language or framework to use
If your testability is good enough
If it’s helping you solve your testing problems

It’s down to you to answer those questions and make those decisions. Answering those questions is significantly harder than writing the code. Yet our industry is pushing people straight into code and bypassing the theory. We hope to address that with this course by focusing on the theory that will give you a foundation of knowledge to master automation.

This is an intensive three-day course where we are going to use our sample product and go on an automation journey. This product already has some automated tests, it already has some tools designed to help test it. Throughout the three days we are going explore the tests, why those tests exist, our decision behind the tools we chose to implement them in, why that design and why those assertions. Then there are tools, we’ll show you how to expand your thinking and strategy beyond automated tests to identify tools that can support other testing activities. As a group, we will then add more automation to the project exploring the why, where, when, who, what and how of each piece we add.

I think you have the right content in the course and also the balance between the practical and theoretical parts is done very well and keeps the flow alive and by the whole training very good to follow. - Sebastian Mutti, Tool-smith Specialist @ Swisscom

First and foremost, kudos to Mark and Richard both for making [AiT] the best professional development experience I’ve had in my professional career. Every single person I talked to loved it. And I already started using the principles you taught us in everyday work decisions - Alex Landis, Software Test Engineer @ Daxko

Like the best DJs, the facilitators were able to assess the mood in the room and tailor accordingly. Many courses I’ve been on have been hampered by a rigid itinerary, this was not the case at AiT. A constant feedback loop kept the participants engaged and enabled them to shape the class to their needs. - Chris Whitehorn

Thank you for all the inspiration from the course! These past two weeks have been great. First of all we decided to go for Cypress, and the developers are stoked about how much they learn about the application when writing (or trying to write) tests. It has already resulted in some improvements in the code and has also given an explanation to some strange behaviour we haven't really been able to pinpoint before. Today we also had a small workshop, that I prepared based on your slides about auditing, where we did some models explaining the system - also much appreciated. - Sanna Huhta, Test Consultant @ ADDQ

Best Software Testing workshop I've attended in recent years. Can't recommend it highly enough! - Jarsto van Santen, Software Test Engineer @ Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO)

In November 2016 I attended Richard's Getting Started With Selenium Webdriver course at Selenium Conf 2016. Although my passion for testing was almost dead (my passion-for-testing-monitor showed a flat line), Richard really inspired me to become a great check automator through his passionate, holistic (personal <=> professional) approach of the topic and testing in general. I truly recommend Richard as a teacher and person for speaking about testing topics. - Joel Grimberg, Software Quality Consultant @ Xebia Group International

Richard’s workshop beautifully captures the power and the pitfalls of using automation tools in testing through the medium of duplo. It is simple, powerful and very effective. Taking part in this workshop should be mandatory for anyone who writes code (or wants to), anyone who works with coders or anyone who leads such people. - Ben Kelly, Director of Reliability Engineering @ Moneytree

I felt that this week's training nailed our intended outcome of increasing people's confidence and competence around automation in testing. The confidence part alone is huge as it had been a bit of a phantom for many people in the room for a long time. I am looking forward to people's stories about how they continue the momentum from the course - Sebastian Mutti, Tool-smith Specialist @ Swisscom

I wanted to send you a quick note to say thank you again for the great training you provided in Utrecht! It has had a significant impact on me, on how I understand and talk about automation and on how I approach many topics! - Jérôme Lasserre, Team Lead - Test Automation and Reporting Tools @ Ubisoft

The 3 day AutomationInTesting course by @FriendlyTester & @2bittester was a blast! Valuable concepts to gain a deeper understanding of testing and how automation can help us. Lots of interactive discussions, hands-on exercises, real-life problem solving! Really recommended. - Lisi Hocke, Principal Agile Tester @ FlixBus

What You Will Learn On This Course

Online
To maximise our face to face time, we’ve created some online content to set the foundation for the class, allowing us to hit the ground running with some example scenarios.

After completing the online courses attendees will be able to:

Describe and explain some key concepts/terminology associated with programming
Interpret and explain real code examples
Design pseudocode for a potential automated test
Develop a basic understanding of programming languages relevant to the AiT course
Explain the basic functionality of a test framework

Day One
The first half of day one is all about the current state of automation, why AiT is important and discussing all the skills required to succeed with automation in the context of testing.

The second half of the day will be spent exploring our test product along with all its automation and openly discussing our choices. Reversing the decisions we’ve made to understand why we implemented those tests and built those tools.

By the end of day one, attendees will be able to:

Survey and dissect the current state of automation usage in the industry
Compare their companies usage of automation to other attendees
Describe the principles of Automation in Testing
Describe the difference between checking and testing
Recognize and elaborate on all the skills required to succeed with automation
Model the ideal automation specialist
Dissect existing automated checks to determine their purpose and intentions
Show the value of automated checking

Day Two
The first half of day two will continue with our focus on automated checking. We are going to explore what it takes to design and implement reliable focused automated checks. We’ll do this at many interfaces of the applications.

The second half of the day focuses on the techniques and skills a toolsmith employs. Building tools to support all types of testing is at the heart of AiT. We’re going to explore how to spot opportunities for tools, and how the skills required to build tools are nearly identical to building automated checks.

By the end of day two, attendees will be able to:

Differentiate between human testing and an automated check, and teach it to others
Describe the anatomy of an automated check
Be able to model an application to determine the best interface to create an automated check at
How to discover new libraries and frameworks to assists us with our automated checking
Implement automated checks at the API, JavaScript, UI and Visual interface
Discover opportunities to design automation to assist testing
An appreciation that techniques and tools like CI, virtualisation, stubbing, data management, state management, bash scripts and more are within reach of all testers
Propose potential tools for their current testing contexts

Day Three
We’ll start day three by concluding our exploration of toolsmithing. Creating some new tools for the test app and discussing the potential for tools in the attendee’s companies. The middle part of day three will be spent talking about how to talk about automation.

It’s commonly said that testers aren’t very good at talking about testing, well the same is true about automation. We need to change this.

By the end of day three, attendees will be able to:

Justify the need for tooling beyond automated checks, and convince others
Design and implement some custom tools
Debate the use of automation in modern testing
Devise and coherently explain an AIT strategy

Best Software Testing workshop I've attended in recent years. Can't recommend it highly enough! - Jarsto van Santen, Software Test Engineer @ Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO)

What You Will Need To Bring

Please bring a laptop, OS X, Linux or Windows with all the prerequisites installed that will be sent to you.

Is This Course For You?

Are you currently working in automation?
If yes, we believe this course will provide you with numerous new ways to think and talk about automation, allowing you to maximise your skills in the workplace.
If no, this course will show you that the majority of skill in automation is about risk identification, strategy and test design, and you can add a lot of value to automation efforts within testing.

I don’t have any programming skills, should I attend?
Yes. The online courses will be made available several months before the class, allowing you to establish a foundation ready for the face to face class. Then full support will be available from us and other attendees during the class.

I don’t work in the web space, should I attend?
The majority of the tooling we will use and demo is web-based, however, AiT is a mindset, so we believe you will benefit from attending the class and learning a theory to apply to any product/language.

I’m a manager who is interested in strategy but not programming, should I attend?
Yes, one of core drivers to educate others in identifying and strategizing problems before automating them. We will offer techniques and teach you skills to become better at analysing your context and using that information to build a plan towards successful automation.

What languages and tools will we be using?
The current setup is using Java and JS. Importantly though, we focus more on the thinking then the implementation, so while we’ll be reading and writing code, the languages are just a vehicle for the context of the class.