My takeaways from test:fest 2023

About the Conference

test:fest is a conference that caters to people interested in software quality. The speakers mainly focus on different aspects of quality and its assurance.

The conference does not have an admission fee, but participants are selected by the organizers who read through all submissions. To get a ticket, interested individuals need to fill out a registration form and justify their desire to attend.

Location

Ibis Styles Wrocław Centrum — by the main train station, pleasant access by train.

Interesting facts

At the entrance, participants were given a badge with a place for stickers, which could be obtained at the partners’ stands and by performing tasks. Collecting the total allowed participation in a drawing for three tickets for the next year and a gadget with the conference logo.
Opportunity to participate in free workshops (additional registration — places ran out very quickly)
Ask:Test — consultations with specialists in various quality fields
Lunch and buffet included in the entrance fee
Free beer for the first 100 people at the after party
Opportunity to donate gadgets we didn’t like so they can be used again

Selected talks

Sustainability — the new quality characteristic (EN)

A presentation focusing on delivering value and quality in the shortest possible time and the aspect of sustainability as a new quality characteristic. Details and development of the presentation topic are included in the book the speaker promoted and on the blog (Checklists).

At the outset, the presenter defined quality as product, process and people, and the goal of automating repetitive activities and tests to achieve the expected quality in the shortest possible time. Stressing that it is not worth automating all activities. Some tasks are easier and faster to do manually; also the aspect of repeatability is important.

Testing is part of Quality Engineering but QE is much more than testing.

Quality Engineering — “Preventive” quality measures. Think about quality from the start.
Testing — “Detective” quality measures. Provides information about quality and risks; provides assurance about the delivery of business value; consists of: verification, validation and exploration.
DevOps — Corrective quality measures. Proactive quality improvement.

VOICE model — delivering business value

Quality features related to value and quality: ISO25010 — quality in use / ISO25010 — product quality

Sustainability as a new quality feature

Will Playwright become a Cypress killer in 2023? (EN)

The presenter is a test automation specialist with experience in Cypress and Playwright, among other tools. During the presentation, he discussed the history of Playwright’s creation and compared the two tools without disregarding either one. He highlighted the importance of being able to develop quickly and work well within a team, including ease of use for the whole team and the ability to conduct code reviews.

The presenter addressed the question of whether Playwright will become a “Cypress killer” in 2023. He stated that this is unlikely due to Cypress’ popularity on npm, which has a large base of current users. However, Playwright has gained more attention on GitHub in just three years compared to Cypress in eight years, indicating that it is rapidly gaining popularity.

One of Playwright’s advantages is its built-in tools, whereas in Cypress, these tools have to be installed as plug-ins, which can result in the need to check if a new version of Cypress is compatible with the plug-ins and a growing package.json file.

Playwright, compared to Cypress:

No watch (cy open)
No public roadmap
No GUI
Better test reports — Trace viewer
Concurrent tests out of the box
Less weight

Why do you need to automate accessibility testing and why is it not enough? (EN)

From 2024, the EU is introducing an accessibility requirement in the e-commerce, banking, telecommunications, and ebook industries, with penalties for failure to comply. The author stresses that accessibility is an important aspect of quality, and cites the WCAG standard as a good source of information on it. He points out that one of the most important aspects of accessibility testing is to include people with disabilities in the tests — no tool can 100% convey the perspective of such a person.

How to test:

Checklist WCAG
Technical testing with tools
Automatic scans: IBM Equal Access Accessibility Checker, Google Lighthouse, AXE DevTools, WAVE Evaluation Tool, Pa11y, ARC Toolkit

Levels of a11y checks (each can be part of CI):

Linters
Unit tests
End-to-end tests
A11y scans

Deployment monitoring:

ARC Platform, AXE Monitor, Pope.tech, Tenon, AMP, A11ywatch, Asqatasun, Pa11y

Why are decisions like guests and how to make even the uninvited ones well? (EN)

Soft skill presentation on decision making and drawing value from decisions we dread. Helpful information both in personal life and at work, e.g., choosing an approach, tools, or technology.

Methods to facilitate decision-making:

Satisfaction method — making less important decisions faster
Change of environment — catching distance from the problem being solved
Saying the problem out loud and/or talking about it for deeper understanding
Trying to present the problem in the simplest way (better understanding)

The author recommends following a culture of error — don’t sweep stumbles under the rug, learn from them, and correct and prevent them in the future.

Recommended books:

Impulse. How to make the right decisions for health, wealth and happiness
Risk Savvy — How to Make Good Decisions
Daniel Kehlmann — The traps of thinking

Atlassian Approach to Quality — Shift left and Quality Engineering (EN)

Presentation of the Atlassian approach to quality assurance and a story with lessons learned. At the conference the presenter had 20 minutes; on YouTube there is an hour-long presentation with the same title.

In the beginning the testers had their own separate team, which caused difficulties, solved by joining testers to development teams. Problems solved by this change:

Bugs found late in development
Bottleneck in testing
Long time between notification and fix
Ping-pong between dev and QA

What problems did joining a tester into the dev-team create?

Lack of development of testing skills among dev
Degradation of quality culture (everyone responsible = no one responsible)
Losing the high-level view of quality
Unclear responsibility for developing improvements in the context of quality

The solution was to add the role of Quality Engineer, who acts as a consultant and mentor. Focus areas:

Processes — defining critical processes, identifying gaps and proposing improvements
Quality processes — introducing rituals and activities, shift left identifying and preventing risks
Education — teaching testing skills to dev teams
Tools — automating testing and improving efficiency
Metrics — understanding quality gaps and enabling focus on the most important things

Abandon all hope, you who enter here (EN)

In this presentation, Tomasz portrays a Tester as a game character who conquers successive levels of hell, acquiring more skills and tools to fight. At the end, a reward awaits the Tester. It was a nice and humorous show — I would recommend it.

Summary

The event was very nicely organized. In my opinion, the only downside was the length of the presentation time slots (as always). There was plenty of time between presentations for networking and discussion. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to sign up for any of the workshops, and also missed the after party. Although I didn’t win a ticket for next year’s event, I hope I will be able to attend in a future year and stay for the whole weekend. Overall, I highly recommend this event.