Serenity BDD is one of the most popular Java test automation libraries, and for good reason! If you are writing automated web tests in Java, using Serenity BDD correctly can reduce the amount of code you need to write by well over 50%, slashing the amount of code you need to maintain yourself. Serenity BDD…
Does BDD Help With Manual Testing? This question came up recently, and it’s a good one. The answer is YES. If you’re a manual tester, or just getting into automation, BDD can feel a bit intimidating. But it turns out, it can be a fast track to more effective agile testing, even if you don’t…
How do you do field validation in a Cucumber scenario? I got this question recently, and wanted to share a few techniques I’ve personally found helpful. Here’s one option: This is a classic data-driven approach. It is pretty readable. But the test will reload the page for each variation, which might not be optimal. What…
For many teams, the benefits of Behaviour Driven Development are obvious. Teams that practice BDD well see significantly lower defect rates and higher quality features. These teams tend to be more engaged and creative as well. More importantly, they stand a much higher chance of delivering the solutions the customer actually needs. So the benefits…
I came across this cartoon recently. It’s supposed to illustrate that two apparently contradictory viewpoints can both be correct, "from a certain point of view". Or that both viewpoints are equally correct. It’s a cute metaphor, but does it hold up to reality? And is it helpful? Now in software development, this isn’t a theoretical…
Parallel execution is a great way to speed up almost any test suite, but for a long time, running tests in parallel with Cucumber has been challenging. But there is great news on this front: Cucumber 6 supports parallel execution of features in JUnit natively. And if you are using Serenity BDD with Maven, this…
A guest post from Andreas Worm (source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/atdd-all-things-andreas-worm) Why would you test the frontend, if you are not confident that the backend is performing correctly? In this article we utilize Serenity BDD and the screenplay pattern. Due to the added level of abstraction, it allows for defining "given-when-then" type scripts to be implemented on the…
What are your testing goals for the week? One way I like to prioritise my own goals is to think in terms of streams. The most obvious stream is value. You need to deliver value to your customer. From an agile test automation perspective, for example, this might mean writing relevant automated tests that help…
Feature Mapping is a simple but effective way for teams to discover, explore and deeply understand the features their customers need. In a Feature Mapping session, teams work through concrete examples of how a feature should work, breaking these examples down into steps and tangible business outcomes. Mapping out these examples helps team members discover…
Modern web applications are asynchronous by nature. So knowing how to wait for elements, before trying to interact with them, is an essential skill in modern test automation. Many testers pepper their web tests with Thread.sleep() statements, but this is the sub-optimal at best. It slows down the tests, makes them more brittle, and can…
