Essential Features

2016-12-10 2 min read SQA

Today I uninstalled Cal, a calendar app for my android phone. I liked Cal when I first installed it. It’s stylish, chic, and minimalist, as you can see from my below screenshots: The problem is, these three screens I’ve shown you? Are the only real screens in the app, save a settings screen. Do you see the problem yet? How about this: when I got to my hairdresser next week, I’m going to want to schedule another appointment, 3 months out. Continue reading

Selenium Grid on Docker and Vagrant: Part 2

2016-07-10 11 min read Longer Tales SQA

Last time we got Vagrant configured to run a single VM with three docker containers: a Selenium Grid hub, a Chrome node, and a Firefox node. This is a good start, but I wanted to configure a Selendroid node to round out the browser selection. That’s when things got a little… messy. So upon investigation into how the Docker images I was already using were constructed, I discovered a few key points: Continue reading

Selenium Grid on Docker and Vagrant: Part 1

2016-07-01 10 min read Longer Tales SQA

I’ve been putting together a quick proof-of-concept here at work about how we could use Docker to run a Selenium Grid. I’m not sure we’ll go that route, but I was curious how it could be done. One of the main advantages of doing this sort of rough proof in Vagrant is that it becomes very portable. At the end of the day, I have a mini testing cloud I can run my tests against — and any member of my team can check out a few files and have their own mini testing cloud. Continue reading

Cucumber is Magic, Right?

2016-05-10 9 min read SQA

Everywhere I go, I see talk about BDD and Cucumber. Cucumber is the promised messiah, the single technology that bridges the world of the business and the world of the programmer, allowing your BA to write executable test cases so you don’t have to spend time automating once you have a solid framework. It’s the future, the new order, and it’s here, now, ready for prime time. Who wouldn’t want to learn it, right? Continue reading

New Year's Resolution: 2015

2015-01-20 2 min read SQA Workplace Tales

My job title says that I work in SQA: Software Quality Assurance, or maybe Quality Analysis if you want to get pedantic, since we don’t actually assure quality so much as kermitflail when it’s not present. The tests are failing! But what is quality? How do I know when something is quality or not? I’ve been pondering the nuances this month, being as it is the first month of the year and the time when everyone tries to lay out their goals. Continue reading