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Author: Rebecca Cramer

SauceCon 2020 Speaker Profile: Nikolay Advolodkin

This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and devopsy.kinsta.cloud will be there, broadcasting live.

SauceCon speaker and automation expert Nikolay Advolodkin says that test automation is insanely hard, and that there are thousands of things we can do to make it really good—or really bad.

“Learning best practices is a great way to create a solid foundation for test automation success,” said Nikolay. “I want to share all of the things that I’ve discovered through my career to make everyone successful at test automation.”

You’d be hard-pressed to find someone more qualified than Nikolay to do that. As a senior solution architect at Sauce Labs and founder of UltimateQA.com, Nikolay educates customers and testing professionals worldwide on testing. Most recently, he was a contributing author to Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals.

He was named one of 33 Test Automation Leaders to follow in 2020 by TechBeacon.com. And according to Udemy.com, he is one of the top Selenium WebDriver instructors across the globe, educating more than 50,000 students on the ins and outs of test automation from more than 120 different countries.

At SauceCon, Nikolay will host a full-day “Best Practices in Automated and Parallel Testing” workshop that takes attendees on a journey through a really poor test that follows multiple anti-patterns. Along the way, Nikolay will help attendees transform this test into a production-ready suite of tests that follows automation best practices: making them extremely robust, fast, atomic and ideal for parallelization. He plans to make this workshop session fun with games that will push the limits of test automation beliefs.

When he isn’t teaching people how to be automated software testing masters or revolutionizing the test automation world as we know it, Nikolay is into physical fitness. He said it helps him stay calm and rock in test automation. He also loves animals and the environment and supports both every day with his plant-based lifestyle.

You can hear from Nikolay and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

March 9, 2020
SauceCon 2020 Speaker Profile: Hugh McCamphill

This is the fourth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and devopsy.kinsta.cloud will be there, broadcasting live.

As test engineering manager at ShopKeep, a point of sale solution provider, Hugh McCamphill leads the company’s internal tools and test improvement team and works to further the test and quality focus of the company as a whole.

Every year, thousands of small businesses rely on ShopKeep to track inventory and sales, and ring up millions of customers. Because of that demand, testing is critical.

With over 15 years of testing experience, Hugh is up to the task. He started out on an agile team, working closely with developers doing testing and writing end-to-end UI tests.

“People have always struggled with how long end-to-end tests take to run,” said Hugh. “It’s become less of a problem in the desktop space, but tests created in Appium can be slower and harder to distribute.”

That’s what drove Hugh to his presentation topic for SauceCon 2020: “Not Just Accessibility IDs: Speed Up Your Appium Tests for Faster Feedback.”

“I wanted to share what we have done with improving the speed of our own Appium tests and suites so that we get more feedback sooner. We no longer rely solely on running tests overnight, we have Appium tests running on every pull request to the app,” he said.

During his presentation, Hugh will help SauceCon attendees better understand the time-consuming aspects of a test and demonstrate some options to reduce test time when interacting and asserting against elements. He will also explain why it’s important to understand the abstractions that you are using (as they might be slowing you down), why to be careful when querying multiple elements and show some of the capabilities that exist to speed up Appium tests.

Throughout his career, Hugh has developed deep expertise in test automation across a range of languages, APIs and tools, and loves sharing this knowledge with others at speaking engagements. He has also been the organizer of the Belfast Selenium Meetup for the last several years.

When he’s not talking about testing, he loves traveling with his family and two young children, playing squash and watching football—or what we in the U.S. would call soccer.

You can hear from Hugh and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 21, 2020
SauceCon 2020 Speaker Profile: Dylan Lacey

This is the third in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and devopsy.kinsta.cloud will be there, broadcasting live.

Software engineer Dylan Lacey works on the Sauce Labs support team, helping customers solve problems and troubleshoot integrations and test failures. And, as an avid home cook, he loves creating and transforming ingredients.

One area of testing where he sees a need for transformation relates to test naming.

“Working in support means that not only do I see a ton of tests, I get to see a ton of malfunctioning tests,” said Dylan. “Many customers are surprised to learn how much they stand to gain by better identifying and managing tests.”

Dylan explains why this is important.

“There are so many badly named tests that affect so many customers,” explained Dylan. “Test names with massively redundant data. Test names with no identifying information. Tests without names. Tests with super long names. I’ve seen it at every size of enterprise and every level of test complexity, and it causes customer frustration every time.”

At SauceCon 2020, Dylan will attack this issue head-on with his session entitled “What’s in a Name? Metadata for Fun and Profit.” Attendees will come away equipped with practical information about what makes great test names, skills to think more critically about test failures and suggestions for using Tags, Build IDs and custom data to help them organize and share tests.

“Even if attendees leave feeling guilty about their metadata, I hope they’ll be equipped and excited to fix it,” said Dylan.

When he’s not working, Dylan has an impressive list of hobbies and leisure activities. He loves cooking, has a tragic amount of cookbooks and even cooks live on Twitch twice a week. He also keeps bees, makes his own mead and cheese, writes short stories and is an amateur leather worker.

You can hear from Dylan and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 6, 2020
SauceCon 2020 Speaker Profile: Hilary Weaver-Robb

This is the second in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and devopsy.kinsta.cloud will be there, broadcasting live.

SauceCon 2020 speaker Hilary Weaver-Robb (known on the internet as g33klady), wants you to know how important it is to test APIs—both alone, and together with the UIs that use them.

Here’s why: If you only focus on UI testing, you may be missing something big. After all, APIs are where all of the business logic for the application is exposed, and they can hide some pretty nasty bugs.

“I’ve been advocating for folks to do API testing for a long time, but after putting together and running a workshop on the topic of testing APIs, I realized that how the UI and API talk to each other doesn’t often get covered in talks or workshops,” said Hilary. “This is an area I had to teach myself a long time ago, and I think it’s valuable information for folks to learn.”

Like many testers, Hilary happened to embark on a software testing career by chance, and fell in love. She is currently a software quality architect at Quicken Loans, and is the sole tester on a team of engineers. Now, with more than 12 years of software testing experience under her belt, Hilary specializes in API testing and C# automation, and runs the Motor City Software Testers meetup group in her hometown of Detroit. She is active in training people on API testing as well as testing tools.

Anyone who attends her talk at SauceCon 2020 will come away with a better understanding of how the UI and API work together.

“This will make it much easier for people to troubleshoot when things go wrong from the UI,” she said. “Also, it will give you a more complete picture of the application under test.”

When she isn’t developing content for the courses, talks and workshops that she gives frequently around the world, Hilary loves to play video games and spend time with her family and her dog.

You can hear from Hilary and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

January 28, 2020
SauceCon 2020 Speaker Profile: Hélène Doumenc and Jonathan Chacón

This is the first in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and devopsy.kinsta.cloud will be there, broadcasting live.

Jonathan Chacón

Hélène Doumenc

Hélène Doumenc and Jonathan Chacón are colleagues on a mission: to help people understand that accessible design is necessary for everyone—not only people with disabilities.

Hélène and Jonathan work together on the QA team at Cabify, a Spanish ride-sharing company that provides vehicles for hire via its smartphone app. Hélène manages the QA team and Jonathan is an accessibility software engineer who works with other teams within the company to make all of Cabify’s digital and physical user interfaces accessible to all users. As a blind researcher and developer, Jonathan is uniquely qualified to lead this effort.

“When I first met Jonathan, I really wanted to work with him to add accessibility testing to our plans, since we were not testing for accessibility at all before,” said Hélène. “This is a clear example of how diversity in our teams can make better products—and better people too! If we didn’t have a blind person working with us, we might never have thought of making our app accessible to people with disabilities.”

Jonathan agreed. “Accessibility is necessary in QA processes to guarantee a quality product for everyone, regardless of disability. I want people to understand that accessibility should be a quality feature, and that technology is the way to make society more inclusive,” said Jonathan.

Hélène and Jonathan will be co-presenting at SauceCon 2020 on their experience in accessibility testing for mobile applications. They will talk about how creating accessible and inclusive mobile apps is not just a utopian ideal—but something that organizations can turn into a reality.

“Recently, I read a comment saying that it is impossible for a blind person to use Twitter,” said Hélène. “People have no idea how wrong this is and how inclusive apps can level the playing field for anyone with a disability. Technology can really help us to create a more inclusive society. We chose to talk about this at SauceCon to make the community aware and conscious about issues that might not cross your mind, but are truly important to create that type of inclusion.”

You can hear from Hélène, Jonathan and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, click here.

— Rebecca Cramer

January 16, 2020
SauceCon Speaker Profile: Phil Wells

This is the seventh in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

Phil Wells is coming to SauceCon 2019 to talk about the New York Times Crossword.

No, really, Phil is a software engineer with the web group of the New York Times Games team whose job is to build quality into the online version of the famous puzzle done by thousands of people daily.

More than anything, Phil cares about mission. During his 12 years of web development experience, he has worked on software that educates parents of kids with autism, software that helps people perform better on standardized tests and now for the New York Times, whose mission is to help people understand the world around them.

“The puzzle brings so much joy into people’s days,” says Phil. “I’m really proud of my work.”

When Phil tells people what he does for a living, they want to know what it means. Does he just solve crosswords all day? Is he in web development or game development? Does he know Will Shortz? (The answer to that last one is no, but he is an emoji in their internal Slack instance!) People love the crossword, and they all seem to want to know more about how the sausage is made.

Phil’s session at SauceCon will be all about “Automating the New York Times Crossword.” He wants to show test practitioners that testing a web application as complex as the crossword involves the same best practices as testing anything else. During his talk, Phil will show attendees some of the tricks his team used to become fast and reliable.

“The main theme of my talk is about making software development feel better. We don’t want to feel the shame of failed builds or delayed releases,” he said. “So, we built these systems to help us ship the stuff we build quickly and safely.” The first half of his talk covers the things the team did to get cultural wins internally. In the second half, Phil will dive into his particular team’s bag of tricks; the tools they use to make sure the tests are making everyone do their job better.

When he’s not working on testing the crossword, Phil enjoys improv comedy. He is also an aficionado of “The Big Lebowski,” and has written a book called “Dudesong,” an epic poem adaptation of the movie, featuring 5,500 lines of poetry in rhyming couplets!

Whether or not you’re a fan of “The Big Lebowski,” you can hear from Phil and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

March 7, 2019
SauceCon Speaker Profile: Richard Bradshaw

This is the sixth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts, to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

Richard Bradshaw is known for running the Ministry of Testing, speaking at events all over the world and for being the “Friendly Tester”—a nickname given to him by a developer.

However, one thing toward which Richard isn’t 100 percent friendly is the Test Automation Pyramid. He says it can and should bring about conversations, but thinks it lacks too much to function as a solid automation strategy, which is how many people use it. At SauceCon 2019, Richard will present some other options in his talk, “Pyramids Are Ancient – Let’s Talk Automation Strategy.”

Richard hopes that people will take away the fact that to truly be successful with automation, you need to fit automation into your overall testing strategy. During his talk, he will review the steps that he takes when conducting an automation audit, steps attendees will then be able to immediately take back to work and begin applying. “I also hope that observing me critique existing models will motivate them to do the same to some of the models used in their current workplace, and identify ways to improve their approach,” he said.

Richard is well-qualified to help testers improve in this area. As the BossBoss (aka CEO) of the Ministry of Testing, his primary role is to ensure they stick to their mission of “co-creating better testers.” Richard and his team offer numerous ways to learn and share testing knowledge. They run the TestBash conference, manage an online learning platform called The Dojo and host meetups all around the world.

When he is not working or thinking about work (a rarity!), Richard loves cooking up a storm, hiking and traveling.

You can hear from Richard and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 27, 2019
SauceCon 2019 Speaker Profile: Wim Selles

This is the fifth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

SauceCon 2019 speaker Wim Selles is passionate about front-end test automation and his enthusiasm is infectious.

He started manual testing back in 2007, then began dabbling in web development to challenge himself. He soon fell in love with front-end web development, deciding that if he truly understood how code works, he would become a better tester.

While employed at Tele2, a large telecom company in the Netherlands, Wim realized the need for an image compare tool for native apps, but he couldn’t find exactly what he needed. So he decided to roll up his sleeves and build an open source module himself.

Wim’s SauceCon presentation, “Building Your Own Native App Visual Testing Module with Appium,” will focus on exactly how he did this. He will share the things he learned about Appium in the process, as well as how he managed to create a cross-platform solution to answer this need.

Wim wants to make people as enthusiastic about test automation as he is. As a solutions architect at Sauce Labs, he helps customers successfully implement the Sauce Labs Continuous Testing Cloud. He conducts trainings, shares best practices and travels the world speaking (and learning!) about coding and testing.

In addition to his passion for test automation, Wim enjoys contributing to the open source community and spending time with his family and two young daughters.

You can hear from Wim and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 19, 2019
SauceCon Speaker Profile: Jenny Bramble

This is the fourth in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

Jenny Bramble started out her career in test engineering as a waitress. Of course, she didn’t realize it at the time, but the skills she gained from waiting tables have served her well throughout her professional life. Learning how to communicate needs between several wildly different groups turned out to be an especially valuable skill in test engineering.

Even now, after making the jump from support to DevOps to manual and then automated testing, Jenny believes that the human element is foundational.

At Willowtree, Jenny works as the test lead on a project team of five to eight developers and three to six test engineers. She leads their testing efforts and works with clients to create products that delight their end users. The concept of delighting users truly guides Jenny’s day-to-day work. “Creating products that make you happy to use them feeds the part of my personality that loves people and wants to make an impact on their lives. It’s a reason I got into testing in the first place,” she said.

At SauceCon 2019, Jenny will present, “Creating Automation Engineers from Scratch.” She will share her personal experience in adopting and embracing automated testing. “Automation is an incredible tool, but creating automation engineers from manual testers is hard,” she said. “Even if testers are willing, they have a lot of hurdles to get over to feel like the same kind of subject matter experts in automation as they are in manual testing.”

When she isn’t working on delighting clients through automation, Jenny has many hobbies that keep her busy. She quilts, crochets, knits, weaves, cooks and even recently took up axe-throwing! Her two cats, Dax and Dante, keep her company through it all.

You can hear from Jenny and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 12, 2019
SauceCon Speaker Profile: Titus Fortner

This is the third in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2019. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 23-25 in Austin, Texas.

The old adage says, “Third time’s a charm.” When it comes to SauceCon speaker Titus Fortner, the cliche proves true: Testing is his third career. Titus first went to the Naval Academy, studied nuclear engineering and became a submarine officer—traveling the world doing everything from launching ballistic missiles to helping automate and streamline communication among the senior staff of the commanding general in Iraq. When he left the Navy, Titus went back to school for a year to learn computer science, then got a job as a junior developer at a startup. Focusing on test automation was an accident, but the influence testing had on the overall system and process was immediately appealing to him.

Titus then became a core contributor to the Selenium project and the project lead for Watir, an open source testing library built on top of Selenium, as well as numerous other testing related Ruby gems. He also implemented automated testing solutions at five different companies before joining Sauce Labs as a Senior Solutions Architect. Today, he works closely with customers to help improve their testing practices.

At SauceCon 2019, Titus will present, “Page Objects: You’re Doing It Wrong.” Although Page Objects enable newer users to write sophisticated tests against an application, Titus has found that the Page Object Pattern is often misused. “There are lots of different ideas on what makes a good implementation, and I’ve actually tried most of them at one point or another and have personal experience that informs my recommendations of certain approaches over others,” he said. “Smart people disagree with me on some of these, and my goal at SauceCon is to present both sides while explaining my reasons for the preferences I have.”

When he isn’t convincing customers how to better use Page Objects, Titus reads, writes open source code and takes day trips with his blind dog who loves car rides.

You can hear from Titus and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2019, the third-annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.

— Rebecca Cramer

February 5, 2019