In this episode of Chris Harbert's podcast, we talk about my journey into test automation, the similarities between application and test code, and my approach to API testing.
]]>My talk "Identifying Code Smells" for yesterday's ZappleTech Test Automation Meetup is now available to watch on YouTube
]]>I added a new overview of my talks and events schedule and all slides and abstracts of my most recent talks to this website. They can be found under the Talks & Events header menu or the Event calendar page!
If you are interested to have me speak at your conference, please contact me via LinkedIn.
]]>I was recently interviewed by Tushar Kashyap, Manager Automation & security testing at bugraptors.com.
You can read the complete interview on the BugRaptors website.
]]>I just released my new open source project "Sandboy Surefire Reporting". It is a very clear and concise alternative report generator for Surefire XML files.
]]>In about seven years of being active in software testing, I never got to experience any one of the Agile Testing Days conferences as a visitor or speaker. So I was very thrilled when two of my submitted papers were accepted for AgileTD in Cologne, Germany.
AgileTD Open Air is held at "Blackfoot Beach" at the Fühlinger See (a pretty big lake) in Cologne, Germany. Since Düsseldorf is only a short train ride away from Cologne, this was probably the shortest distance I ever had to travel for a conference.
The whole conference takes place on the beach, so it's naturally sandy and breezy. The main stage is covered, but all four sides are open. This can be quite distracting when you want to follow a presentation, as you can see the lake and blue sky in the background. There's also the regular public crowd, so you'll see people bathing every now and then. The conference area is separated by cords, but every now and then a bather strayed onto the premises and asked where to buy fries.
Outside the conference, there was plenty of room for recreation, conversation and leisure activities. The whole event really felt like a vacation in between.
The day of my arrival, there was a kick-off evening. The official check-in was at 4:00 p.m. and it was like a pre-conference day to get familiar with the venue, the people and the overall organization. This was pretty nice and I haven't seen something like this ever before in a conference.
This was a great session by the legendary Janet Gregory and the first time I have seen her speak live. She was talking about why brains can get stuck (she called it "having gummy bears in your head", hence the title of the talk) and what we can do to fight this. She had a lot of valuable tips like establishing focus sessions without any distraction and taking regular breaks to reflect your progress. Overall, a perfect session to get into the conference mood without being too overwhelming.
After Janet's session, there was a BBQ which was really nice. Having food at the beach while talking to a lot of nice people from the software testing domain - what could be better?
Overall, I have to say that the food across all days was quite exceptional. I've been to a conference recently and unfortunately it was a bit different (I'm not naming names).
After dinner, there were a number of group activities. However, I did not participate in any of these activities as I felt comfortable just being there and talking to people. I took the first shuttle bus back to the hotel as I had some preparations to make for my presentation the next day.
I had worked a lot on my presentation the night...
]]>Writing a book is a daunting task, especially when it's about a technical topic like API testing with Karate. This is my journey from the first empty page to the finished book which officially launched today!
I never seriously thought about writing a book. During my career, I had written quite some blog posts and two magazine articles but never something too extensive and in-depth. So it came quite as a surprise when I was approached by Packt Publishing to talk about a potential project.
Unfortunately, I was not the right person for what they had in mind. I won't disclose the initial topic here. Let's just say that I didn't have enough knowledge or practice with this subject. I turned this down but took the chance to pitch something else that I was actively working with and had experience in: writing a book on Karate API testing.
This was a rather spontaneous idea, because we have been using this testing framework in our company for some time and I gradually gained more and more knowledge about it. Also, I noticed that there was no literature about it yet, only the official online documentation, a lot of Stack Overflow posts and occasional Tweets showcasing some functionality.
The first step for me was to fill out a document detailing the concept of the book, its chapters, key learnings and potential audience. Based on this document, Packt started researching about the Karate framework, its distribution and the state of literature around it. When they came back with their findings, it took some more video calls to finalise the contract, some more conversation with HR to get the necessary permission for a sideline activity and, of course, to my family. After all, they would have to deal with me not being available for quite a while.
The toughest part about this initial document was the estimation of the needed number of pages for each chapter. What I later found out was that this number is not just an arbitrary placeholder but it is expected that the chapters roughly adhere to these numbers. This is also called out by reviewers and if there is a larger deviation from it, you need to be prepared to explain why this is. You are always free to make changes to the structure of the book if you have good reasons for it. This happened multiple times throughout the writing process as the overarching theme, tone and breakdown of the book becomes clearer.
I am a procrastinator. When I tell people this, often times they are quite surprised since I usually get stuff done. The thing is that this often times happens at the last second. This is why the contract I finally received from Packt looked very scary at first as there were very tight deadlines set for every phase of the writing process. For each chapter, there is a clear date for the deliverables, when the...
]]>I was interviewed by <Packt> Publishing about the process of writing the book "API Testing with Karate" with them.
You can read the complete interview on the Packt website.
]]>I was a guest at Joe Colantonio's Test Guild automation podcast. We spoke about various automation topics, the Karate framework, my new book and code smells.
Head to the to Test Guild website to watch or listen!
]]>My book "Writing API Tests with Karate" is finally available for pre-order! 📙
If you're interested in API #testing in general, or the powerful Karate testing framework in particular, this book is for you. 🥋
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