Vadim Strazhkin

Let’s talk QA metrics — because guessing ain’t it! From tracking defect density to checking test coverage, the right numbers help you spot what’s working (and what’s not) real quick. Metrics = your secret weapon to kill defect leaks, boost automation ROI, and make smarter moves that actually improve your testing game. Why settle for ‘meh’ when you can go full-on QA legend? Numbers don’t lie, so let’s measure what matters and level up together. #QATesting #MetricsThatSlap #QualityGoals #TechVibes"

20

2 Comments

Let's talk about certifications... especially in the QA world. I see so many postings with, "ISTQB certification or equivalent" as a requirement. I have had a hand in hiring hundreds of QA Engineers and SDETS and not once have I asked a candidate about a certification. It's just not needed to do the job. Anyone can study for a test and pass it what matters is can you do the job. Stop asking for and disqualifying candidates based off of useless certifications.

28

7 Comments

About a year ago, I launched a Russian-speaking YouTube channel (https://lnkd.in/eUwiSVEU), which has grown to 75k subscribers. Although it began as a blog about my QA career, I haven’t posted anything related to that in over six months. When I started, I secretly hoped that content creation might be "my true calling." I was excited about the idea of turning this passion into a full-time endeavor, freeing me from the constraints of my previous career in Tech. A few months ago, I left my job, partly because of this new passion. Around the same time, I read a book called So Good They Can’t Ignore You. It made me realize: you can’t abandon a career and suddenly succeed at something entirely new just because you're passionate about it. It requires building what the author calls Career Capital — a set of rare and valuable skills you can offer to the world. Only AFTER that can you think about receiving something valuable in return. This approach worked for me as a QA engineer — a realization that only came to me after I attempted a career switch and read the book. I became skilled not because I was naturally talented but because I dedicated countless hours to deliberate practice and navigated many stressful situations, like sleeping just 4 hours a day and working 16-hour days during an onsite 3 week trip abroad to prepare a system for UAT. I hadn’t fully appreciated that these challenges and focused efforts were what helped me grow professionally. For my new activity — YouTube — I’ve poured approximately 400 hours into a single video (the most recent one). That’s totally OK because: 1. I’m new to scriptwriting. 2. I have no prior experience in video editing. 3. I struggle with shyness, often feeling extremely anxious when filming in public places. Despite these challenges, I want to become good at content creation. However, the biggest realization is how much I also want to excel in my primary field — QA. More than even I’m now willing to invest hundreds, even thousands, of hours into mastering the skills required to become a true professional. Ironically, while chasing what I thought was my “true calling,” I’ve come to understand that the only real “calling” is the pursuit of excellence in the work I’m already doing. Have you ever faced a similar realization about your career? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

90

12 Comments

Recently, I learned a handy SQA tip from a colleague that you might already know! When testing onboarding or signup processes, you often need multiple email addresses. If you're a Gmail or GSuite user, here's a trick: For example your email is [email protected], you can add "+anything" after the username, like: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] The best part? All emails will still come to your original inbox ([email protected]), but you'll be able to track them by checking the 'To' field in the received email. Note: I didn't try with any other email provider, if you already done this, please share your experience. #qatips #signuptesting

87

6 Comments

🌟 Driving Quality with NUnit and SpecFlow: A Perfect Match for BDD Testing 🌟 As a Senior Quality Analyst, delivering robust, reliable, and scalable software solutions is my top priority. One of the most effective combinations I've worked with is NUnit paired with SpecFlow—a powerful duo for behavior-driven development (BDD) and automation testing. Here’s why this pairing stands out: ✅ Readable and Reusable Tests: SpecFlow’s Gherkin language allows you to write human-readable test scenarios that bridge the gap between technical teams and business stakeholders. ✅ Seamless NUnit Integration: NUnit provides a highly flexible testing framework for executing SpecFlow scenarios, offering excellent control over test execution, assertions, and reporting. ✅ Behavior-Driven Development (BDD): By focusing on "Given-When-Then" structures, this combination ensures your tests align directly with user stories and acceptance criteria. ✅ Scalability and Maintainability: With SpecFlow's reusable steps and NUnit's parallel test execution, it becomes easier to maintain and scale your test suite as the application grows. ✅ Continuous Integration Friendly: Easily integrates with CI/CD pipelines using tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, or GitHub Actions, ensuring faster feedback loops and reliable deployments. 💡 Pro Tip: Always maintain a clean separation between your step definitions and feature files. This ensures your test scenarios remain readable, and your code stays maintainable. With tools like NUnit and SpecFlow, testing isn't just about validation—it's about enhancing collaboration, driving quality, and delivering user-focused software. 🚀 How are you leveraging NUnit and SpecFlow in your projects? Let’s share ideas and best practices! #QualityAssurance #NUnit #SpecFlow #BDD #AutomationTesting #SeniorQualityAnalyst #TestAutomation #ContinuousIntegration #SoftwareQuality

5

Here's why everyone in tech HATES Software QA and Testing: - Non-technical execs don't understand why QA/testing exists… isn't it engineering's job to write quality software? - Engineering leaders view QA/testing as a necessary evil, and test automation is slow, expensive, and boring - Developers get resentful when their code gets thrown back at them with 26 bugs they didn't consider (a.k.a "my baby is ugly" phenomenon)  - Sales doesn't realize QA/testing exists - Testers start to hate QA/testing when they're constantly underfunded and overworked Anyone I miss? p.s. ok ok, almost everyone, two notable exceptions: experienced/wise eng leaders, great/innate testers

23

1 Comment

Is your software testing approach stuck in the past? Ditch or rethink these 5 old-fashioned techniques for a modern approach.

1

(Shameless plug) I'll be speaking at the Agile Testing & Test Automation Day Summit in San Francisco on Oct 25. The topic of the talk is "The sieve of Eratosthenes approach to achieving bug free code". It is based on several Medium articles I've written (including one with the same title). See you there! #qualityengineering #softwarequality #testautomation #softwareengineering

15

1 Comment

Do you know the best way to get started with Playwright? What is the best AI/LLM for Testers? Have you seen the mind-boggling Selenium stats? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild New Shows for the week of June 23rd. So, grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea, and let's do this.   Featuring automation awesomeness contributions from: Igor Dorovskikh Vasyl Shpak Engenious Playwright Bruno Lopes Ole Lensmar Testkube Kubeshop Jan Molak John Ferguson Smart BrowserStack Jason Arbon Sai Krishna Srinivasan Sekar Sudharsan Selvaraj Appium Nandan Mullakara Selenium 🤖 Jason Huggins Simon Stewart Gearset Kevin Boyle Juan Fumero Monica Beckwith   ** ALL LINKS IN THE COMMENTS BELOW ** #devsecops #automationtesting #softwaretesting #performancetesting

118

16 Comments

Hey friend testers! Quick question: Should my next blog post or plugin adventure dive into the world of Playwright? I'm itching to explore the Playwright ecosystem more and thought, "Hey, why not migrate my brand-new cypress-ajv-schema-validator to Playwright and create a brand-new playwright-ajv-schema-validator?" Sounds fun, right? Plus, it seems there's an ol' gap in the market for a Playwright plugin like this, just like there was for Cypress. So, what do you think? Should I go for it? Yes, no, or do you have a better idea? I always appreciate your input. Thanks, my Rockstar Testers!

20

17 Comments

1. Question Everything 🚀 📌 "That’s how we’ve always done it" is not an answer. In software development, bad assumptions hide in plain sight—inside requirements, processes, and even test cases. That’s why questioning everything is the first step in my QA philosophy. 🔍 Ask yourself: - Why does this requirement exist? - Is this process actually solving a problem, or just adding complexity? - Does this test catch meaningful defects, or is it just passing because we expect it to? 🚩 Example: A few years ago, we had an endless regression suite running overnight. Engineers barely checked failures because "those flaky tests always fail." The real issue? The tests weren’t written with failure analysis in mind. Once we questioned their value, we reworked them to be precise, deterministic, and useful. 💡 The takeaway: 🔸 If a test, requirement, or process can’t justify its existence, it doesn’t belong in the pipeline. 🔸 "Because that’s how it is" is never a good enough reason. 🔸 Everything should prove its worth—or be challenged, changed, or cut. 👉 When’s the last time you challenged a long-standing QA process? What happened? Let’s talk! #SoftwareTesting #QualityAssurance #LeanAgile #PragmaticEngineering #Automation

5

Loop has always relied on a recruitment-first approach to hiring QA, labor intensive, but which consistently helps us punch above our weight class. Recently, as an experiment, we posted an QA Automation Specialist position on LinkedIn. The results provided some really interesting insights. The job description included a couple of criteria: candidates needed to be based in the States, willing to work remote, and have a min one year automation experience with Cypress/Playwright. Over the course of a 5 days, we received 1,100 applications! We narrowed down the applications to approximately 200 that met our experience criteria. We then sent these candidates a very brief competency check, designed to test basic automation skills like nested locators and variable usage. It should take no more than 20 minutes even with a year of experience. I do want to acknowledge that I know it's incredibly hard to get a job, and asking candidates to complete a competency check while applying for multiple positions is demanding. On the other hand, our team couldn't possibly interview 200 people. These checks are absolutely necessary to reduce the number of candidates before investing our team's time. Even interviewing 20 candidates is a significant commitment. Of those who responded: -58% dumped the check into GPT and submitted it without ever trying to run the code. There are a couple of dead giveaway patterns. -28% submitted code that didn't pass for other reasons. -Only 14%, or 7 candidates have submitted code that passed so far. Our Takeaway: -The effort needed to identify qualified candidates suggests startups/small teams will clearly struggle with hiring for technical QA roles and may compromise on candidate quality. -Many applicants used GPT to complete the check without running the code, showing a trend of reliance on AI tools that can hide true skills. I love AI, just make sure your code works. -The high failure rate on a simple check highlights a major skills gap in the market for automation engineers. -This experiment confirms the need for pre-interview screenings to efficiently manage the recruitment process and find qualified candidates. Effort likely most teams don't have the capacity for. What's been your experience hiring? #qualityassurance #hiring #qa #softwaretesting

96

22 Comments

Change is a challenge, but it’s also an investment. Don’t stick with tools simply because you want to avoid the process of switching. Invest in tools that empower your team instead of holding them back.

1

The Art of Interviewing: Are We Failing Great Candidates? As a seasoned Lead Solutions Architect in QA/QE w/20+ years of industry experience, I’ve been part of countless technical interviews in my last Organization, both as a panelist and a mentor. Over the past 6-7 months, I’ve coached over 25 professionals (all in good faith, no money involved), conducted mock interviews, and helped them prepare for real-life scenarios. But despite all the preparation, a glaring issue keeps surfacing-a fundamental flaw in how interview evaluations are conducted. Here’s what I’ve observed: 👉 For Junior to Mid-Senior roles, about 50-65% of R1 interviews are wrapped up in just 10-12 minutes—a time barely sufficient to scratch the surface of a candidate’s technical depth or problem-solving approach.   The candidate is bombarded Q's on code syntax and asked to write 2-3 lines of code. Okay, that’s absolutely fine. But simply if the candidate does not answer say 2 or 3 out of 10-12 questions **YOU CHOSE** to ask him back-to-back in first 10-12 minutes, does not prove that He/She is not hands-on. They can learn the fundamentals behind those 2-3 Q's. Give them a Chance!     👉 For some of peers, with whom I brainstormed for Senior positions, the opposite happens. Round 2 Interviews stretch beyond 30 minutes, often hitting the 60-80 minute mark. While this might sound like thorough evaluation, it often veers into unstructured territory, leading to unfavorable outcomes. At first, if R2 panelist does not find the candidate suitable in the initial 20-30 minutes, then what inspired them to extend the discussion so long?   "Tell me 1 or 2 most challenging situation that you have encountered in your career. How did you solve those?" A lot of Interview panelists are fascinated with asking this particular question. But the evaluation gets digressed and looses it worth, when the Panelist starts expecting that the candidate response should resonate very well with the Hiring Company's Challenges. How can we judge any candidate, be it junior / mid-senior / even senior management, based on their responses with a bias towards only what you want to hear or what you have solved. No two Projects / Lob’s will have ditto same challenge situation. Likewise, not every candidate might have encountered exactly same situation that you are expecting to them to explain. Lastly even, if the problems are similar, there is no such thumb-rule to address and solve a problem in only one way. Because everything is subjective, situation-specific, and Individual Approach. As far as problem was resolved, that demonstrates Leadership and Problem Solving Skills.   So, where’s the problem? Let us park this for now; we will diagnose that as well.   I would love to hear from you on above. What has your experience been with technical interviews—either as a candidate or a panelist? How can we make the process better? Share your thoughts below! #TechLeadership #InterviewInsights #QA #QE #HiringExcellence

1

Agile Testing in 2024: An Industry Veteran's Take on AI's Impact I remember the days when software testing was a marathon, not a sprint. We'd meticulously craft test plans, execute them manually, and meticulously document every bug. It was a time-consuming process, and the pressure to keep up with development cycles was relentless. But then came Agile. The shift to Agile testing was a game-changer for me and my team. We embraced collaboration, integrated testing into the development process, and learned to adapt to change. The results were undeniable: faster releases, fewer defects, and happier customers. Fast Forward to 2024: AI is the New Frontier Now, 16 years into my career, I'm witnessing another revolution: AI-powered Agile testing. It's like having a super-intelligent assistant who never tires, never misses a detail, and is always learning. Imagine this: The AI Test Case Whisperer: It analyzes your user stories and requirements, then whispers in your ear a comprehensive set of test cases that would take you days to create manually. The Self-Healing Test Automation Maestro: It orchestrates your automated tests, not only running them but also adapting them as your software evolves. The Data-Driven QA Oracle: It sifts through mountains of test data, revealing hidden patterns and predicting potential failures before they happen. The Pixel-Perfect Visionary: It examines your user interface with the precision of a hawk, catching even the tiniest visual inconsistencies across multiple devices and platforms. Lessons Learned from a Testing Veteran As seasoned testers, we bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. Here's how we can navigate the AI revolution: Embrace the Change: AI is not a threat; it's an opportunity. Let's embrace it as a partner in our quest for quality. Learn and Adapt: AI is a rapidly evolving field. Let's invest in learning new skills and tools to stay ahead of the curve. Collaborate and Innovate: Let's work hand-in-hand with developers and data scientists to create a seamless and effective AI-powered testing ecosystem. Uphold Ethical Standards: Let's ensure that AI is used responsibly and ethically, with a focus on transparency and fairness. The Future of Agile Testing: A Shared Vision The future of Agile testing is a collaborative one, where human expertise and AI capabilities work together to create better software, faster. Let's embrace this exciting new chapter and continue to elevate the standards of software quality. Let's Discuss: As experienced testers, what are your thoughts on the role of AI in Agile testing? Have you experimented with any AI-powered tools? What challenges or opportunities do you see ahead? Share your insights and let's shape the future of our field together! #AgileTesting #GenerativeAI #TestAutomation #AIinTesting #SoftwareQuality

1

💡 Real-World QA Lesson: It’s Not Just About Local Success! 💡 Ever been in this situation? A developer delivers a build for testing, but issues pop up. When addressed, the developer says, “But it works perfectly on my local setup!” The project owner then steps in with a truth bomb: "We're not building a product that only works on ‘your’ local environment!" 😏 This highlights a key principle in QA: A successful product works across all intended environments, not just locally. Testing is here to catch these gaps, ensuring a consistent, reliable experience for all users, not just developers. Lesson: Quality assurance is about real-world readiness, not isolated success. The goal is a product that performs reliably for every user, every time. Let’s keep testing and iterating until the experience matches the vision—beyond “just my local”! 👏 #ContinuousImprovement #RealWorldReady #QA #SoftwareTesting #QualityMindset 

6

Finally, I’m sharing my first tech article! 🎉 I wrote about Saleor's move from Cypress to Playwright - why we made the switch, what we learned, and how it’s been going so far. ➡️ Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/dtTYBkWF 🎀 I’d love to hear if you’ve had similar experiences or which tool you’re using for testing!

39

3 Comments

🚀 Running your QA operations without AI is like navigating a rocket with paper maps. You may eventually get there, but it's slow, prone to error, and misses the big picture. Oversai is your mission control—a cutting-edge AI system that processes 100% of your interactions, pinpoints improvement opportunities and reduces operational costs. It's not just an upgrade; it's a transformation. Ready to leave legacy tools behind and launch your operations into the future? Let's talk 🌌 #CX #VOC #QA

23

Leadership Beyond Metrics: Cultivating Team Excellence in QA 🌟🤝 In QA, success isn’t just about achieving metrics like defect counts or test coverage—it’s about empowering the people behind those achievements. Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring 50+ engineers, guiding them toward innovation, collaboration, and ownership. Here’s what I’ve learned about building exceptional QA teams: 1️⃣ Empower Ownership Encourage engineers to view testing as more than validation—it’s about preventing issues before they occur. By fostering ownership of projects, team members become proactive in addressing risks and gaps. Example: I established a “Test Ownership Program” where team members led end-to-end quality for a module, enhancing confidence and accountability. 2️⃣ Foster Continuous Learning The QA landscape is evolving rapidly, and upskilling is non-negotiable. I’ve introduced: Regular knowledge-sharing sessions on tools like Selenium, RestAssured, and JMeter. Pairing juniors with experienced QA engineers to bridge knowledge gaps. The result? A 30% improvement in team efficiency and more leaders emerging from within. 3️⃣ Recognize Innovation Metrics are milestones, but innovation is the goal. Celebrating out-of-the-box solutions keeps teams motivated and invested. Example: When one team member automated a manual bug triage process, reducing triage time by 40%, we shared their achievement organization-wide, reinforcing a culture of innovation. 4️⃣ Build a Safe Space for Collaboration A QA team functions best when there’s trust. I prioritize: ✅ Open feedback loops. ✅ Inclusive brainstorming sessions that value every voice. ✅ Team retrospectives to celebrate wins and address challenges constructively. Why It Matters: Strong leadership transforms QA teams from “testers” to quality champions—professionals who don’t just ensure software works but elevate the entire development lifecycle. What’s Your Take? What’s your favorite approach to nurturing QA leaders? Let’s collaborate and build a future of innovative, empowered teams! #QALeadership #SoftSkills #QualityAssurance #Mentorship #TeamExcellence #Leadership

2

1 Comment