Video Talk: How to Pass a Coding Interview as an Automation Developer

I gave my first talk, ever, outside of the local software testing Meetup group I run, back in January 2018, as part of the Automation Guild, basing it on a TechBeacon article I wrote when I was looking for new positions in Boston in the Summer of 2016.

Enjoy!

How to Pass a Coding Interview as an Automation Developer
https://youtu.be/fgT3Q9vJ74s

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

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Excerpt: How to Gauge What Your Tests Are Doing

Excerpted from Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals (2018), featuring stories from over twenty software testers. Order your copy now!

How to Gauge What Your Tests Are Doing

Introduction

Every software development team struggles with answering two questions:

• How can the entire team, from business analysts to developers to testers, determine how your product should behave? 
• How can you gauge how your software product is truly behaving? 

Dan North, as an answer to those questions, came up with the concept of Behavior Driven Development (BDD). Phrasing the Testing part of Test Driven Development (TDD) as a Behavior, it transformed BDD from a testing tool into a communication tool.

With BDD, the entire team as a whole can brainstorm together on how the product should (and should not) work. By breaking down behaviors into small, simple, and understandable sentences, the documentation being created can be used as a product specification, as a blueprint developers and testers can use and as acceptance criteria the business analysts can evaluate.

Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals - Launch date September 12!

September 12th, Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals, the first book I have ever contributed to, will be launching!

"The Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals book, is a definitive guide for DevOps teams covering practices required to excel in implementing and sustaining continuous testing (CT) in each step of the DevOps pipeline. The book was developed in collaboration with industry experts from the DevOps domain, that includes CloudBees, Tricentis, Testim.IO, Test.AI, Perfecto, and many more.

"The book addresses all the DevOps practitioners including software developers, testers, operation managers, and IT/Business executives.

"[...] All profits from this book will be donated to code.org to support kids that wish to learn programming".

Find more information here!

What a fun project! I am thrilled to have been asked to contribute.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

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Blogging about software testing has been temporarily interrupted on account of baby related cuteness

Here, I wanted to start a new software testing project for this blog...

Each time I try to work on a new side project at https://t.co/HWLWVew4E2 while I am home on paternity leave.

"Sorry for the inconvenience, but blogging about anything relating to software testing has been temporarily interrupted".#firsttimefather #geekdad pic.twitter.com/gXZ68HVGVk

— T.J. Maher (@tjmaher1) July 12, 2018

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Release Date of Project Tiny Human: July 6, 2018 -- Welcome to the World, Tommy!

Project Tiny Human is a success! 

Project Tiny Human has been released to production July 6, 2018!

The initial release date was July 4, 2018, and everything was on track up to the last minute... but you know how dates for production release can slip.

My wife has been acting as Product Owner and Head Developer for the entire project. I have volunteered for daily production and overnight support.

Thomas "Tommy" Edmund Maher was born July 6, 2018 at 2:16 pm to Melissa and T.J. Maher.

• Weight: 8 lbs, 12 oz
• Length: 19.7 inches long

"Hello world!"

#firsttimefather #proudpappa #GeekDad

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

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Stop Compromising Quality: Setting Automation Up for Success - Angie Jones, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Missed last Wednesday's Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup, hosted and sponsored by SmartBear? Where Angie Jones, SDET at Twitter, provides metrics that help her decide what to automated at Twitter?

Have no fear! SmartBear live-streamed the conference. It starts at the 52 minute mark.

Stop Compromising Quality: Setting Automation Up for Success https://youtu.be/WAu1gWmKp5w


Thank you so much Brianne Cordima and Bria Grangard of SmartBear for setting up this event as the Ministry of Testing - Boston's event organizers!


Slides:Which Tests Should We Automate? - Angie Jones

Notes: Day Two of Agile Testing Days USA - Wed. June 27, 2018

This is Part Two of Two. Care to go back to the beginning?

Lean Coffee

More lean coffee today with @tjmaher1 @lisacrispin @mheusser #AgileTDUSA pic.twitter.com/4054BmE7wY

— Alex Kell (@Wiggly) June 27, 2018

Unicorn Held For Ransom

I noticed there was something different on Day Two of the Agile Testing Days USA conference immediately. Where was the giant inflatable unicorn??

Oh no! The unicorn for #AgileTDUsa is being held for ransom for $100! #SavingLinnea pic.twitter.com/EkDK4V6bxi

— T.J. Maher (@tjmaher1) June 27, 2018

Notes: Day One of Agile Testing Days USA - Tues. June 26, 2018

I had such a wonderful time at Agile Testing Days USA, a European-based software testing conference that came to the United States for the first time this June, held up north of Boston, up in Danvers, Massachusetts.

Ever since I became a Meetup Organizer of a local Boston area software testing group, I have been having the most fun running many a social media campaign on LinkedIn and Twitter, reaching out to the software testing community to recruit speakers, hosts, sponsors, and members.

With Agile Testing Days, Tuesday June 26th - Wednesday June 27th, 2018, I managed to meet many of my favorite text-based life forms face-to-face!

It’s @AgileTDUSA in Danvers, MA! pic.twitter.com/wW6t7KCPDv

— T.J. Maher (@tjmaher1) June 26, 2018

My experience started out on a very high note: I met Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory face-to-face!

Intro to setting up a BDD framework with VS Code + Gauge + Ruby

With Integrated Development Environments (IDE), I am quick to adopt whatever the rest of the developers on the team use. For Java development, I like IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition. For JavaScript, Atom.io. And for writing the Capybara + Ruby framework, I have also been using Atom. The problem is that the BDD framework we are using at work -- Gauge -- has plugins that help refactor Gauge tests written in Java, but hasn't had anything for refactoring Gauge tests written in Ruby... until now.

With this blog article, I will be investigating Visual Studio Code -- commonly known as VS Code -- and how it helps refactor tests.

Why am I currently using Ruby for my automation framework if the BDD Framework hasn't supported it? Both Chef.io -- what I use to spin up virtual environments -- and GitLab.com -- the code storage / continuous integration environment also uses Ruby.

I've written a bit about Gauge and drafted a quick-and-dirty Gauge + Ruby + Selenium project, on this blog. With this experiment, we will be editing Gauge's built in project, setting up everything on my Windows 10 machine at home.

If you want to view a summary what the gauge-vscode can do, view the official docs on GitHub.

Basic Chef + Test Kitchen: Setting up Ubuntu with Vagrant + Virtual Box + the Test-Kitchen Ruby Gem on a MacBook

Let's say we wanted to test something out on Ubuntu, a popular Linux distribution, on a MacBook: How would we be able to set it up locally, configuring the workstation? We set it up in Docker before. What other ways are there?

One way to do it is with a Chef.io tool to spin up a test environment, Test-Kitchen, and its Ruby gem. And, yes, this cooking metaphor is extended all throughout the Chef toolset with its cookbooks and recipes for environment configurations.

Adventures in Automation started looking at The Ruby Behind Chef, the History Behind Test Kitchen, and exploring the free tutorials that Chef provides, the extensive Learn Chef Rally.

For this article we will be using:

• Test-Kitchen on GitHub as a primary source: builds a Vagrantfile, allowing you to create or destroy the instances of your virtual machines
• Vagrant: "a tool for building and managing virtual machine environments in a single workflow. With an easy-to-use workflow and focus on automation, Vagrant lowers development environment setup time, increases production parity, and makes the "works on my machine" excuse a relic of the past".
• Oracle's VirtualBox: "VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization application. What does that mean? For one thing, it installs on your existing Intel or AMD-based computers, whether they are running Windows, Mac, Linux or Solaris operating systems. Secondly, it extends the capabilities of your existing computer so that it can run multiple operating systems (inside multiple virtual machines) at the same time."

See a Two Minute Promo of My Talk: "How Software Testers Can Work With Developers"

The TestingGuild.com released the first two minutes of my talk "How [Software Testers] Can Work With Developers" as a promo for their online conference!

T.J. Maher - How to Work With Developers (TestingGuild Promo)
https://youtu.be/pGppCmUNMI4

Each TestingGuild.com speaker submits a pre-recorded 30 minute talk, then gives a live 30 minute session. Joe Colantonio, the man behind the TestTalks.com podcast organized this online conference and the AutomationGuild.com one that I spoke at back in January.

This is awesome! I've been a fan of Joe's since I worked at Fitbit. A fan of SauceLabs.com automation webinars, I booked a conference room, and the entire automation team and I watched Joe give his talk, Test Automation Trends for 2016 and Beyond: Staying Employable in Changing Times,  predict what 2016 was going to look like when it came to automation toolsets. I've been chit-chatting with Joe on Twitter ever since then.

What I love is that Joe express exactly the insecurity we all sometimes feel dealing with the fast paced software industry. During that talk, Joe admitted that because he was at the same workplace for a bit over a decade, he was feeling out-of-touch with how fast the software testing field was growing. Joe  started a testing podcast and started interviewing industry leaders as a way for him to keep up with the times.

Me, I was tickled when I heard this. That's why I started this blog over three years ago. To keep track of my progress as I tried to keep up with the software testing industry. 

Once, I was even supposed to be a guest on his show! Sometime's after I published my first Techbeacon article about switching from manual testing to automation development, we set things up. I had massive stage fright and cancelled the thing after the first five minutes... Which is why I am surprised he tapped me as a guest last November to be a guest speaker on the AutomationGuild.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Video has been shot, edited and submitted for the TestingGuild!

Think you know your stuff in regards to testing software? There is no better way to level up than attempting to explain what you think you know to others.

I have learned so much blogging these past three years about automation projects I have been working on, writing articles for LinkedIn Pulse and my Medium account, shooting video for my YouTube account, and getting paid to write articles on TechBeacon. 

The process of writing an article or a script for a video forces me to organize my thoughts and double check what I think I know. Are there gaps in my knowledge? Oh, I certainly find out if there are! If I am fuzzy on something, I make sure to do more research.

The best part has been all the connections that I have been able to make, and all the wonderful discussions I have been having on LinkedIn and Twitter. The software testing community is extremely supportive for people who put themselves out there, even to newbies like myself. It's hard for me to believe, but I've only been doing automation for the past three years.

This year, to try something different, I started giving talks at online conferences. The founder of TestTalks.com, the software testing podcast, Joe Colantonio, invited me to speak at two of his online conferences:

• January 2018, it was at the AutomationGuild.com
• June 2018, it will be at the TestingGuild.com

I suck at public speaking. I get so nervous, speaking out as if I am at a TED Talk. If only hiding behind podiums was still in fashion, reading off a script! I could do that. Trying to give a talk, remembering the exact phrasing as I had planned? It is so nerve-wracking for me.

An online conference is just my speed! All I had to do was shoot thirty minutes of video with my iPhone, edit it, and that was the basics of the talk. There is a 20 minute Q & A session after each talk, but I haven't a problem answering questions from an audience.

I am so glad that it is finally done! It has been hanging over my head for the past few months. All my energy has been sapped by either my new job -- which is why I haven't been posting weekly these past few months -- or reorganizing my life due to the new bouncing baby boy due July 4, 2018.

I am going to be a father! I am so excited. I cannot wait!

So, if you don't hear from me in July or August, you'll know why!

Thank you for all your support, and Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

I'll be speaking in June at the TestingGuild.com!

This June, I will be giving a talk at the online software testing conference run by Joe Colantonio, creator of the TestTalks.com podcast. Thank you, Joe, for giving new (and inexperienced) speakers a chance at the TestingGuild.com!

I love it! I am writing a script write now for the 30 minute talk. That's the conference: each speaker gives a 30 minute pre-recorded talk, plus a live Q & A session.I can do take after take to my heart's content!

This will be my second time giving a talk. In January 2018 I gave a talk at the AutomationGuild.com.

Catch my talk at the TestingGuild.com!

See you there!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Setting up Ubuntu Linux with Docker

Let's say that I only have a Windows 10 system at home, and I wanted to take a refresher course, Michael Hartl's Learn Enough Command Line to Be Dangerous. There are many ways to get Linux on a Windows machine. The easiest I found? Docker. Besides, they use Docker at work, so I need to practice that, too.

There are some technologies that keep on popping up again and again in my short career as an automation developer. One of those is Docker. "Docker is a software platform that allows you to build, test, and deploy applications quickly. Docker packages software into standardized units called containers that have everything the software needs to run including libraries, system tools, code, and runtime", according to AWS's article, What is Docker?

Back in July 2016, I was doing some weekend work to see if my company might be able to set up Docker with the new Docker Toolbox, with me working with our DevOps team, implementing a Selenium Grid using Docker-Selenium to possibly offload some of the cost of Sauce Labs, which can get pricey. I was inspired by a Selenium Conf India 2016 talk, "Testing as a Container". The month before, I was also tinkering with Setting up a Virtual DEV environment with VirtualBox, Vagrant and Docker, based on a Test Driven Java Development book I was reading. The projects were nixed, and I moved onto other things.

Years later, in March 2018, I would revisit this project, Starting a Selenium Grid using AWS + SeleniumHQ Docker images and Docker Compose.

That's how it goes jumping from gig to gig the past few years: from workplace to workplace the technology stack changes. Hopefully with my current full time permanent gig I can stop tinkering, settle down for five or six years and actually get good at some of this stuff, instead of always feeling that I am paging through the book "How To Skydive" while I am in free fall.

With this blog article we are not doing anything so fancy. All I want to do is bring up a Docker image containing Ubuntu. You see, as much as I love my work Macbook, at home I always use a Windows machine. Every few months I am tinkering with a new tool or technology, installing the Windows version of whatever I am tinkering with. It gets cluttered with half-forgotten tools. Maybe if I use Docker, I can start using a real Linux environment while at home instead of the half-baked hybrid I have been using.

Yeah, I could Start a Linux Machine with Amazon Web Services Free Tier, which I researched back in January of 2018 ... but between you and me, I worry about leaving a process running, and being stuck with a hefty monthly bill. Luckily, Docker for Windows would work just as easily!

Docker Community Edition

So You Want To Be An Automation Developer - Guest Post on Blog.SmartBear.

Last week, SmartBear.com -- the company behind TestComplete, ReadyAPI, QAComplete, SoapUI, and Swagger -- tapped me on the shoulder. Did I want to write a guest post on their blog? How about something that manual testers could use as a guide to switch to automation?

It took me three hours, but I came up with an article: So You Want To Be An Automation Developer.

 "Are you a software tester trying to break into automation? Need pointers to get your first job? Although I only have three years of experience as an automation developer, I may be able to point you in the right direction.

"Step One: Take a Coding Class

"When you are writing automation, you aren’t simply tinkering with a new toolset or technology. You are writing software in order to test software. It will definitely help you if you start learning how to code. With your first job, you won’t need to know how to write clean code or refactor tests right away, but if your job interviews are anything like the ones I had, you will have to demonstrate some knowledge of a programming language during your job interview.

"My biggest recommendation if you are brand new to coding? Check out your local community college to see what programming classes they offer. Testing and developing are completely different mindsets. Learning from and interacting with a teacher, bouncing ideas off of students, and forming up study groups will help with the ever growing frustration as you are learning this brand new skill. You will hit wall after wall trying to understand the basic concepts. Your study group can be your wrecking crew. It also helps that everyone in the class are tackling the same concepts at the same pace".

Read more here.


Thank you so much, SmartBear for publishing my article! Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Starting a Selenium Grid using AWS + SeleniumHQ Docker images + Docker Compose

Remind me to pretty up and copyedit this post this weekend.

With this blog post we will be exploring how to start a Selenium Grid using an Amazon Web Service (AWS) instance the SeleniumHQ Docker images, Docker and Docker Compose. For this example, I will be using a Macbook, so the Terminal will be my Command Line Interface.

Need more information? Check out the official Amazon Web Services documentation:

• What is Docker?
• What is an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
• Amazon Linux AMI FAQ
• Docker overview

We could use the "Amazon Elastic Container Service" and using AWS Fargate to run containers without managing servers or clusters ... but since I am tinkering, I want to make sure that I am using only free services provided by the Amazon Free Tier that I signed up for last month.

We are going to be starting off by following along with the official docs by Amazon, AWS Docker Basics.

Watch Seb Rose Talk About the Big Ideas Behind BDD

Couldn't make it to Day One of Seb Rose's "BDD Kickstart" course, held Tuesday March 20th, 2018 from 9:00 to 4:30 pm at the SmartBear.com Assembly Square, Somerville, MA office? Man, that was fun! Hear him summarize the class in his talk he gave the Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup, live streamed and recorded!

Catch me give a brief intro in the video!

The Big Ideas Behind BDD 
Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup: 3/20/2018
https://youtu.be/hQyXgKENDtg

Want to view his slides?

Introduction to BDD - shortened from Seb Rose

The Ministry of Testing - Boston at SmartBear.com

Thank you SmartBear for being such a wonderful sponsor for my Meetup!

Seb Rose, Cucumber.io

Thank you, Seb, after a long day teaching your class for speaking to our group!

Brianne from SmartBear, hard at work managing the live streaming

Thank you, Brianne, our newest event organizer at the Ministry of Testing - Boston for organizing the event, setting it up, managing the live streaming, and acting as emcee!

Seb Rose & T.J. Maher, Meetup Organizer of the Ministry of Testing - Boston

I just really love the Ministry of Testing - Boston. It has been so much fun the past year-and-a-half running the group!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Getting to Know GitLab and How They Test the UI

The past three years as an automation developer, I have worked with many different continuous integration platforms such as Jenkins, TeamCity, and CircleCI, hooking up my automation to it so the tests can be run once an hour, nightly, or every single time is checked in.

Threat Stack uses GitLab for its Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI / CD) pipeline. Why? You should ask Pete Cheslock, head of DevOps. He is currently writing about his experience in our company blog:

• How Threat Stack Does DevOps (Part I): Best Practices in the Wild (March 14, 2018)
• How Threat Stack Does DevOps (Part II): Engineering for Rapid Change (March 16, 2018)

With GitLab, I am more concerned with finding out what it does in general. Lucky for me, they give YouTube tours such as this one shot back in November 2017, Idea to Production with GitLabs.


This video gives you a good idea of using GitLab to do issue tracking, planning, committing to the repo, testing with CI, debugging in the terminal, deploying to production, scaling an application and application performance monitoring.

The History of GitLab

According to https://about.gitlab.com/history/

"2011: Our CTO Dmitriy needed an great tool to collaborate with his team. He wanted something efficient and enjoyable so he could focus on his work, not the tools. He created GitLab from his house in Ukraine. It was a house without running water but Dmitriy perceived not having a great collaboration tool as a bigger problem than his daily trip to the communal well. [...] So together with Valery, he started to build GitLab as a solution for this. This commit was the very start of GitLab.

"2012: GitLab.com: Sid saw GitLab for the first time and thought it was natural that a collaboration tool for programmers was an open source so you could contribute to it. Being a Ruby programmer he checked out the source code and was impressed with the code quality of GitLab after more than 300 contributions in the first year. He asked Hacker News if they were interested in using GitLab.com and hundreds of people signed up for the beta. In November 2012, Dmitriy made the first version of GitLab CI".

Wait a Second... GitLab Uses Ruby?

Oh, that is interesting! GitLab is coded using Ruby! The Test Engineering  team picked the Ruby language for its automation framework because Chef and Test Kitchen use Ruby. As a Ruby Newbie, I have been finding it helpful to review the great work the Gauge.org people have done creating examples using their BDD framework with Capybara.

What I find more fortunate is that it appears that GitLab uses for its UI tests what I am attempting to use: Capybara + Ruby + Headless Chrome.

I need to check out Mike Greiling's article, "How GitLab switched to Headless Chrome for testing: A detailed explanation with examples of how GitLab made the switch to headless Chrome".

As Mike put it, last year, "news spread that Chrome 59 would support a native, cross-platform headless mode. It was previously possible to simulate a headless Chrome browser in CI/CD using virtual frame buffer, but this required a lot of memory and extra complexities. A native headless mode is a game changer. It is now possible to run integration tests in a headless environment on a real, modern web browser that our users actually use!

"Soon after this was revealed, Vitaly Slobodin, PhantomJS's chief developer, announced that the project would no longer be maintained".

And all of the source code for GitLab's Community Edition is stored on GitLab. Awesome!

At my job there are so many things that are new to me:

• I am new to Gauge.org
• I am new to Ruby
• I am new to Capybara
• I am new to GitLab
• I am new to Headless Chrome. 

... For the last week, since I was placed on Threat Stack's UI team, I've written a few UI tests, but they all run locally, on my own computer, but I was stumped when it came to using CI with GitLab. I've been searching for a model to base my new framework on.

Looks like I found one. This should be fun! 

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Use 20% Discount Code ATDTJ for Agile Testing Days in Boston, Coming Late June!

Did you know? The Ministry of Testing - Boston has a group discount code for Agile Testing Days! Want to borrow it? I checked with Techwell, and they said it was okay to share! Use the discount code ATDTJ to get 20% off the already discounted "super early lobster" pricing which is running until April 27th, 2018. 

The conference is running June 25 - 29th, 2018 and will be held in the DoubleTree Hilton up in Danvers, MA.

Prices before the 20% discount:

• Tutorials: Choose to spend the day learning Agile Testing 101 with Janet Gregory & Lisa Crispin, End-to-End testing with Paul Holland, Lean Software Testing with Matthew Heusser, and many others: $795
• Two conference days: Includes Keynotes by Angie Jones, and Noah Sussman; Talks by Ash Coleman, Maaret Pyhajarvi, Andreas Grabner, Brendan Connolly, Huib Schoots, Claire Moss, Llewellyn Falco, and many others: $1,945

There also will be a class "Python for Testers" run by Kristoffer Nordstrom.

Wow. It's like my Twitter feed come to life!

... I wonder how many people I can get recruit to come to a Ministry of Testing - Boston? So far, we already have had:

• Angie Jones speak to our group in a Google Hangout last Spring.
• Claire Moss, organizer of the Ministry of Testing - Atlanta brought Llewllyn Falco, to run a Lean Coffee last year.
• When MoT-Boston invaded last year's TestBash Philly, we heard Ash Coleman, and Paul Holland speak.
• Andreas Grabner will be speaking to us in April.
• I've been trying to recruit Lisa Crispin since last summer to give a quick Q & A in a webinar to us, but we've haven't been able to do it yet.

This should be fun! If the baby doesn't come early, I think I should be there!


Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Ministry of Testing - Boston: An Origin Story

For most of my twenty year career, I have been searching to become a part of a software testing community. To find myself running one after so long of a search absolutely astounds me. 

Ever since I became the Meetup Organizer of the Ministry of Testing - Boston I have been having the time of my life! I really have given my all to the group, having a heck of a lot of fun planning events, meeting people, and trying to build a community of software testers here in Boston. I love the challenges of growing the membership, running fun social media campaigns, finding interesting speakers, and making connections here in Boston. And all of this has been in the past year! 

So much has happened since we moved from being the Greater Boston QA and Testing Group to under the umbrella of Rosie Sherry and Richard Bradshaw's Ministry of Testing:

Are You a Gauge Expert? How Do You Graft On a Fluent Selenium-Ruby Framework?

Are you an expert in Gauge, the BDD framework? ( See a Brief Overview of Gauge ).

I have a question: How do you work with selenium-ruby?

I was planning on working towards what Dave Haeffner has in ElementalSelenium.com creating a library of:

• Using Base Page Objects to wrap Selenium Ruby calls with proper waits.
• Using Page Objects, so that when locators inevitably change, I know where exactly to fix them.
• Making the tests data-driven
• Adding Rescue exceptions to avoid weeding through Stack traces.
• Maybe JQuery Growl for better logging, and Wrapped Selenium Tests

I am brand-new to Gauge and using Selenium-Ruby. So far I only have used Selenium-Java.

It looks like Gauge strongly advocates against page objects calling them an Anti-Pattern. Er... Um... burying a page's locators in code, as they do in the blog makes me worried. I am looking for other solutions.

"How Machine Learning Helps Test Software" - Ministry of Testing - Boston - Feb. 6, 2018

On Tuesday, February 6th, 2018, the Ministry of Testing - Boston was invited by Mabl to hear John Kinnebrew and Sergei Makar-Limanov describe how mabl "uses machine intelligence to automate visual insights and make tests more adaptive".

With their AI, you can train mabl to go on a "user's journey". Much like Selenium IDE, the record-and-playback device, you walk the agent on what you as a tester would like it to focus on. What you want it to know. What you want it to ignore. It then learns and adapts, learning how you like to test.

Their product should be launching a free public beta in a few weeks. I can't wait to try it out!

Thank you so much, mabl for having us!

Intelligent Testing with mabl: Adaptive tests and automated visual insights
John Kinnebrew and Sergei Makar-Limanov
February 6th, 2018

Intelligent Testing with mabl from mabl

About John Kinnebrew:

https://johnkinnebrew.com/

"John is building intelligent tools that enable developers to create better software at mabl. He received his B.A. in Computer Science from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University. His research interests include machine learning, combinatorial optimization, intelligent agents, and coordination in multi-agent systems.

"At Bridj, he led the research and data science group with a focus on machine learning and AI optimization techniques applied to transportation modeling, prediction, and optimization for improving mass transit. His research at Vanderbilt focused on the design of intelligent pedagogical agents and machine learning techniques to model important learning behaviors, including metacognition and self-regulated learning strategies, from activity traces of student interaction in educational systems".


Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Introduction to Vulns, Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, the CVE List, and the National Vulnerability Database

Whenever I find a software testing position in a field in which I am unfamiliar, I try rounding up all resources I can. In my security testing research, I found a syllabus for Tufts University's COMP 116: Introduction to Computer Security course offered Spring of 2018. Just my luck! The instructor for the course posted the entire syllabus and required reading material online, including a copy of a wonderful slide deck for a presentation on an Introduction to CVE, CWE, and the Top 25 given by Steve Christey Coley, creator of the term, CVE -- Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures.

What is a Vulnerability?

According to CVE.MITRE.org, in their terminology section, "a vulnerability is a weakness in the computational logic (e.g., code) found in software and some hardware components (e.g., firmware) that, when exploited, results in a negative impact to confidentiality, integrity, OR availability. Mitigation of the vulnerabilities in this context typically involves coding changes, but could also include specification changes or even specification deprecations (e.g., removal of affected protocols or functionality in their entirety).

"Examples of vulnerabilities include:

• "phf (remote command execution as user "nobody")
• "rpc.ttdbserverd (remote command execution as root)
• "world-writeable password file (modification of system-critical data)
• "default password (remote command execution or other access)
• "denial of service problems that allow an attacker to cause a Blue Screen of Death
• "smurf (denial of service by flooding a network)"

MITRE, a not-for-profit in Bedford, MA, maintains the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE)® List.

Introduction to the Learn Chef Rally!

Need to automate configurations for Amazon Web Services? One way to do it is with Chef.io.

Chef does the "cooking" metaphor to the hilt! Configurations are "recipes", written in the Ruby programming language, which are stored in a "cookbook". We covered this in early January with The Ruby Behind Chef.

This metaphor continues: To automate all of this, you use the product "Test Kitchen".

Seems complicated? To help you out, Chef create the most amazing set of documentation I have ever seen: The Learn Chef Rally.

From Getting Started With Chef in Learn.Chef.io:

"If you're new to Chef, just know that Chef lets you automate all the things—infrastructure, applications, compliance and more. Learn Chef Rally will teach you how. It's the hub for Chef and DevOps related resources that will build your skills.

"The Learn Chef Rally curriculum is organized by tracks. A track groups related learning activities.

"We call each learning activity a module. Modules include a mix of hands-on labs, articles, and videos. Our hands-on labs help you get started quickly on the platform that you care about most.

"When you finish a module, you'll see a few quiz questions at the end. Answering these questions correctly gives you credit for having completed the module. You can track your progress on the home page".

Since my job will be automating Amazon Web Service tests, spinning up and tearing down environments, I'm starting the module on Test Kitchen: "Infrastructure Code Deserves Tests Too".

A Brief Overview of Gauge, a BDD Automation Framework, brought to you by Thoughtworks!

When it comes to automation toolsets, I am up for learning anything! I'm always eager to adopt whatever toolset a company is already using. Right after my first automation gig, I would attempt to lobby the team to use what I knew already, not confident in my own ability to drill down into the details with a new tool. Now that I have had a few years of experience of learning toolsets on the job -- and with this blog -- I am more confident in my ability to do Just-In-Time Learning.

After a bit of quibbling -- we are doing BDD? Why not Cucumber? Why Ruby? -- I hunkered down and try to learn what they were already using at my new job: Gauge, a BDD automation framework brought to you by Thoughtworks - India.


Gauge: 

• Website: https://gauge.org/
• Official GitHub: https://github.com/getgauge
• Gauge Community: https://github.com/getgauge-contrib
• Twitter: @GetGauge
• Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/getgauge
• Feedback Page: https://github.com/getgauge/gauge/issues/493
• Reference Documentation: https://docs.gauge.org/index.html

What Is the DevOps toolset "Test Kitchen" and Where Did It Come Come from? Fletcher Nicol at ChefConf 2014

When learning and investigating a new open-source tool or technology, I find YouTube to be an amazing resource!

Beyond the many tutorials, presentations, and instructional videos, I try to see how the creators of the tool introduces and talks about it to the open-source community. What was the creator trying to achieve? What problem was to be solved? And, most importantly, how can I take the creator's message and transfer it to the work that I am doing?

Right now, I'm trying to get up to speed on Test Kitchen < kitchen.ci,  @kitchenci >, the product we use at work, combined with Chef.io, to automate spinning up and tearing down different Amazon Web Services environments.

With the "Learning Chef Rally", it is going to take me a few weeks to finally get to the part I need, learning exactly how the DevOps tool spins up environments, so I was also seeking alternate sources to tide me over.

Luckily, I found this, introduced at ChefConf 2104, a conference about Chef...

#ChefConf 2014: Fletcher Nichol, "Test Kitchen: One Year Later and the Future

Fletcher Nicol, 2014

https://youtu.be/YzlCHAbJ7KM

Starting a Linux Machine with Amazon Web Services Free Tier

It's my first time working at a cloud-security company using Amazon Web Services (AWS)! How to get up to speed?

To get up to speed, first, I've attempted to decipher the AWS Alphabet Soup in an earlier blog post. Next, to get more exposure to AWS, I signed up for the AWS Free Tier. I was a bit leery, since I needed to punch in my credit card information when I signed up.

• Some AWS services are free for 12 months, provided I do not go over 750 hrs per month of usage of EC2, and over 5 GB of Storage in Amazon EFS or 30 GB of Elastic Block Storage for long term. If I go over, or accidentally use a service that isn't on the free tier, I worry I am going to rack up a huge charge.
• Some services seem to be always free. 

Luckily, I didn't have to look far in order to find help!

• Getting Started Resource Center: Mentioned in the email received upon sign up.
• AWS Documentation 
• AWS 10 Minute Tutorials on everything that you could think of!

An introduction to good security practices, with Sam Bisbee, Chief Security Officer of Threat Stack

I was nervous starting my position at a cloud-based security firm. It 's been a while since I was a security tester testing against the OWASP Top Ten. How would I get trained in good security practices? Luckily, newbies like myself aren't just thrown into the deep end. They have Sam Bisbee (@sbisbee),  Chief Security Officer of Threat Stack to guide them.

"As the Chief Technology Officer at Threat Stack, Sam is responsible for leading the Company's strategic technology roadmap for its continuous security monitoring service, purpose-built for cloud environments. Sam brings highly-relevant experience in distributed systems in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, as well as proven success scaling SaaS startups. Sam was most recently the CXO at Cloudant (acquired by IBM in Feb. 2014), a leader in the Database-as-a-Service space, where he played a senior technical and product role". - Threat Stack / Author: Sam Bisbee

What were the first introductory security sessions like? Take a look at talk that Sam Bisbee gave at AWS: re:Invent on November 2017:

"Stop Wasting Your Time: Focusing on Security Practices The Actually Matter".
Sam Bisbee, Nov 2017
https://youtu.be/d4XXmZi32tg

The AWS Alphabet Soup

AWS. EC2. S3. S3 Buckets. SQS. SNS. ARN. IAM. Eb. AMI. Cloud Trail. Cloud Formation. Diving through our product documentation on my first day at Threat Stack, and I couldn't understand a word!

I am getting exposure to AWS -- that is, Amazon Web Services -- for the first time in my new Software Development Engineer in Test role. All the companies I have worked at in the past had their own physical servers hosting whatever SaaS -- Software as a Service -- web or mobile product I was testing.

With SaaS, like the Software as a Service name implies, it's like Microsoft Office: You can choose to rent the software per month or per year. Yes, you could purchase the student version, and apply any patches and bug fixes yourself, but when using SaaS, Microsoft handles everything.

Likewise, the same business model applies for infrastructure and platforms.

Interview Question: How To Test a Web Page - New Video Blog Entry

Taken from my first blog entry for Adventures in Automation, the January 24, 2015 blog post, "What is a QA Engineer?", it's a new video blog!

Interview Question: How to Test a Web Page:

https://youtu.be/jZEdbtqb5G0

Happy Testing!

Thank you Mabl.com for the "404: {Broken AF}" T-Shirt!


-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test
Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

Happy Birthday, Adventures in Automation: Three Years and Counting!

When I started this blog three years ago, I still wasn't sure how I ever was going to switch from manual testing to automation development. I kept trying to switch departments at my previous company for years, but never had much luck. Then the layoff happened, and I found myself job searching after five years, finding that much of the software testing job market in Boston had changed.

I talked over with my wife my idea of postponing job searching for two months, living off of my severance pay, while I re-learned how to code and studied automation development -- one last big push to try to cross over.

This time, I did things a bit differently:

• Taking Alan Richardson's online course, Selenium WebDriver with Java for the third time in three years, this time instead of simply listening and taking notes on his material, I made sure to type out code out as he did in his video lessons, causing things to finally stick in my mind.
• I placed my results, a basic automation framework on my new GitHub account.
• My wife suggested I turn my copious amount of automation research notes into a blog. I wrote my first few articles that January: What is a QA Engineer, Waterfall + QA, Before Waterfall, and Agile Software Development.

Now, I was able to go on interviews and talk intelligently about how to put together a rudimentary automation framework, and point to code that I had written. After a tough three months, I landed my first automation development position.

Since then, it has been a fun-filled three years, learning about automation, capturing what I have been learning on this blog:

2015: I started this blog, and my first automation development position with Selenium WebDriver and Java testing the user interface of eCommerce software.

2016: The editor of TeachBeacon.com, after discovering this blog, recruited me to write my first published article for his tech magazine. I started digging into REST API testing with Stripe. By the end of 2016 I am using Selenium with Node.JS with Nightwatch.js.

2017: I become the Meetup Organizer of the newly rebranded Ministry of Testing - Boston -- the first time I was the main person in charge of a Meetup group. Through social media campaigns I grow membership from 300 to 600 people in the first six months. I hosted 21 of the 30 Meetup events on our calendar. I also obtained a contract putting together a proof-of-concept of a mobile testing framework using Appium + Java.

2018: January 2018 I launched a YouTube channel based on this blog! Feel free to Subscribe! The Ministry of Testing - Boston hits 900 members. I also found a permanent job writing automation at the webservice and RESTful API layer, using service virtualization using Chef + Kitchen.

All these successes I have had are due to this blog.

A blog post on job interviews became an article, a talk I gave to a new Meetup, and was developed into an online conference talk a year later.

Thank you, dear reader, for all of your support.

And thank you, most of all, to my wonderful wife, Melissa. Thank you for spending the past seven years with me, and for marrying me five-and-a-half year ago. My life is what it is because of you.

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test

Meetup Organizer, Ministry of Testing - Boston

Twitter | YouTube | LinkedIn | Articles

How Would You Test A Chair? A Warm Up Question To Give Candidate Software Testers

I've been on many a job interview as a software tester these past twenty years.

On a job interview, to see how well candidates think on their feet, and how dig they deep in their testing, the interviewer can talk about an ordinary item to the candidates that is unrelated to software testing, and ask the candidate how to test it.

The item could be a phone. A calculator. A pen. Or even a chair.


Interview Question: How Would You Test A Chair?
https://youtu.be/EjOf5ZaCj4E

Ministry of Testing - Boston 2017 Wrap Up - Video Blog!

The Ministry of Testing - Boston Meetup's first year is now behind us.

Here's a wrap up of all we accomplished in 2017!

https://youtu.be/F4Fw3K94Yq0

Subscribe to the YouTube channel at http://bit.ly/tj_youtube!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

The Secret to My Success as a Software Tester? Dungeons and Dragons!: New Video Blog Entry

Another new entry to Adventures in Automation, the video blog! Subscribe to it now, so you don't miss a thing!

The Secret to My Success as a Software Tester? Dungeons and Dragons
https://youtu.be/NfH505fq9tk


Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

Practicing Ruby Through Exercism!

I think I have covered Ruby fundamentals enough this past week! I covered:

• Franklin Webber's webinar The Ruby Behind Chef, which started me off
• Zed Shaw's Learning Ruby the Hard Way
• Gone through Ruby in Twenty Minutes using IRB
• Most of Codecademy's free Learning Ruby course
• Two-thirds of Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide to immerse myself in more advanced concepts.

Now, to put all that knowledge that I think I have to the test! I could start with CodeWars or HackerRank...

Instead, I wanted to check out the site Franklin Webber mentioned in his webinar, Exercism.io, an open-source practice area written by a former JavaRanch.com volunteer. 

Learning Ruby

When it comes to programming languages, I am pretty language agnostic. With only three years of work experience developing automation, I am still learning, adopting whatever toolsets and technologies my employer already is using.

Sure, I still prefer Java, but only because it was my primary language back in grad school. Although I only consider myself a junior Java developer, I still think of it as my mother tongue.

• 2014: As the manual tester supervising an offshore automation team, I tested out and tinkered with the Calabash / Ruby code they were using to automate mobile apps.
• 2015: Selenium WebDriver/ Java was used to write the automation framework in my first job as an automation developer.
• 2016: Pairing with the Node.js product, I adopted Nightwatch.js to write tests for a Vue.js JavaScript-based front end.
• 2017: Appium / Java was selected in a mobile testing proof-of-concept I was creating.
• 2018: My new upcoming SDET job uses Chef. Chef uses Ruby. Therefore I need to re-learn Ruby. 

But where to start re-learning Ruby?

Notes on Franklin Webber's webinar, The Ruby Behind Chef

For the past week, I've been trying to do a cram session on Ruby, one of the many programming languages I will be using in my next job as a Software Developer in Test.

Why Ruby? Chef, A DevOps tool, is written in Ruby... a language I don't even know.

The quickest way to learn how to swim? Row your boat into the deepest part of the lake and jump right in. Try not to drown too much.

Likewise, the quickest way I have found for me to learn? Dive right in. See how how long I can tread water before choking, sputtering, and coming up for air.

Care to go on a dive with me?


The Ruby Behind Chef (September 2016)
Franklin Webber, Training Lead at Chef
https://youtu.be/CnBP2uv3Yog

A New Year Brings New Changes To My Life

The New Year ushers in new changes for 2018:

All my knowledge I've picked up while adulting will be stress-tested. My wife and I are expecting a bundle of joy July 4th, 2018! #firsttimefather

This @BlissCartoons from https://t.co/mBFUoHTtXo & @NewYorker is quite appropriate. pic.twitter.com/M8kik0J6TQ

— T.J. Maher (@tjmaher1) January 1, 2018

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

Welcome to Adventures in Automation on YouTube!

Adventures in Automation is now on YouTube!

New episodes released every Monday! Make sure to go to the YouTube channel and Subscribe!

https://youtu.be/koeCfy2b0UM

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"

Top Adventures in Automation blog entries for 2017

With Adventures in Automation, How Was 2017?

So far, in 2017, this blog attracted the attention of 33,700 different users, according to Google Analytics.

Here are the top five blog posts for Adventures in Automation for 2017:

#5: What happens when you ask the Twitterverse: "How Can a Manual Tester Switch To Automation?"

#4: Build a Basic Appium Framework: Review How to Inspect Mobile Apps with Appium Desktop

#3: Learning Serenity BDD: An Automation Framework That Uses Specification by Example (SBE)

#2: New automation framework released to test APIs: Introducing Karate, by Intuit India's Peter Thomas 

#1: Learning Appium Desktop: What is Appium Server and How Do You Start It Through Appium Desktop?

Thank you, dear reader, for all your continued support.

Coming in 2018:

New Blog Entries! 

Mid-January 2018, I start a new job as a Software Development Engineer in Test: An SDET role at a security company, tackling brave new technologies -- some I've only tinkered with, some which are brand-new to me.

I have done API testing before, using Apache Http Components, Rest Assured, and Twitter4J. Most of these have been in Java, though. Although I have tinkered with Docker and Vagrant, I have never used DevOps tools such as Chef or Kitchen. And I have never used Scala or Ruby, two of the primary coding languages they will be using.

... I made sure to tell my future employer all of this -- I am nothing if not brutally honest on job interviews. They hired me anyway, saying they would provide plenty of on-the-job training. Not wanting to embarrass myself, I've started to hit the books. There are plenty of resources on Scala, Chef, and even the API of the product I will be testing.

Expect many more blog entries on these subjects in the coming months as I do some extra-curricular learnin'.

New Speaking Engagements! 

I am a speaker at Joe Colantonio's Automation Guild 2018, and will be giving a live Q & A session January 10th, 2018 at 11 AM.

https://youtu.be/Ja7tCXguXXw

A New YouTube Channel!

I will be starting a new weekly video blog, sharing my experience with software testing, starting Monday, January 1st, 2018. Subscribe now!

I hope you and yours have a happy and healthy 2018!

Happy Testing!

-T.J. Maher
Twitter | LinkedIn | GitHub

// Sr. QA Engineer, Software Engineer in Test, Software Tester since 1996.
// Contributing Writer for TechBeacon.
// "Looking to move away from manual QA? Follow Adventures in Automation on Facebook!"