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Top Test Automation Resources To Learn and Practice
Editor’s note: We present an overview of essential test automation resources recommended by ScienceSoft’s QA team. Should you be planning to streamline the testing process, don’t hesitate to challenge its knowledge and skills to implement test automation in your project.
New to test automation or search to advance your knowledge and skills in the field? This list of best resources on the topic from ScienceSoft’s test automation engineers is intended to catch you up on the best resources on test automation. It combines information from well-known test automation gurus, popular test automation forums and ScienceSoft’s experience in the test automation field.
We’ll keep the list updated and add new sources of test automation knowledge.
What to read?
One of the biggest QA trends, test automation has become a focus of the enterprise software testing processes only recently. However, the testing community has long promoted and researched this approach, and now offers a wealth of works on the topic.
Below, we list the best resources to get an overall understanding of test automation and learn about test automation basics and the combination of automated and manual testing:
| 1 | Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams by Lisa Crispin, Janet Gregory |
| 2 | Complete Guide to Test Automation: Techniques, Practices, and Patterns for Building and Maintaining Effective Software Projects by Arnon Axelrod |
| 3 | Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation by Dorothy Graham, Mark Fewster |
| 4 | Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation by Jez Humble, David Farley |
| 5 | Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals: A Practical Guide From Industry Experts by Mr. Eran Kinsbruner |
Further reading around the topic includes:
| 6 | Advanced Software Testing - Vol. 2, 2nd Edition: Guide to the ISTQB Advanced Certification as an Advanced Test Manager by Rex Black |
| 7 | Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement by William E. Lewis |
| 8 | The “A” Word. Under the Covers of Test Automation by Alan Page |
| 9 | A Practical Guide to Testing in DevOps by Katrina Clokie |
| 10 | How Google Tests Software by Jeff Carollo, Jason Arbon, James A. Whittaker |
The core of test automation is the tools for automated tests. To learn how to get the best and the most of a specific tool, turn to books by renowned experts on test automation tools. In ScienceSoft’s test automation practice, a go-to solution is Selenium. So, here’s our list of comprehensive resources where test automation engineers share their hands-on experience of working with Selenium in particular and some of Selenium alternatives:
| 11 | Selenium Testing Tools Cookbook by Gundecha Unmesh |
| 12 | Selenium Design Patterns and Best Practices by Dima Kovalenko |
| 13 | Mastering Selenium WebDriver 3.0: Boost the Performance and Reliability of Your Automated Checks by Mastering Selenium WebDriver by Mark Collin |
| 14 | Learn Selenium: Build Data-Driven Test Frameworks for Mobile and Web Applications with Selenium Web Driver 3 by Unmesh Gundecha, Carl Cocchiaro |
| 15 | Appium Essentials (Appium is a tool that enables mobile app testing with Selenium WebDriver) By Manoj Hans |
While books take time to write and publish, blogs are an excellent way to get the newest info regularly and keep your skills up to date. Among the blogs our QA team monitors for the latest test automation insights are:
| 16 | TestGuild by Joe Colantonio |
| 17 | EvilTester by Alan Richardson |
| 18 | Sogeti’s research blog |
| 19 | Ministry of Testing (MoT) |
| 20 | The Automation in Testing (AiT) Blog by Richard Bradshaw (CEO at Ministry of Testing) and Mark Winteringham |
| 21 | Blog by Dr. Gleb Bahmutov |
| 22 | Elemental Selenium by Dave Haeffner |
| 23 | Responsible Automation by Paul Grizzaffi |
| 24 | Imalittletester by Corina Pip |
What to watch?
Are you more of a visual learner? Test automation topic is not massive on YouTube, but we have something for you too:
| 25 | Automation Step by Step: Raghav Pal, a world-renown educator on the topic of automation, geeks out on automated UI testing, API testing and CI/CD implementation in more than 300 tutorials |
| 26 | Selenium Conference: all the talks recorded from SeleniumConf |
| 27 | EvilTester: short step-by-step tutorial videos and practical tips centered around Java, JavaScript and Selenium from Alan Richardson, the author of “Dear Evil Tester”, “Selenium Simplified”, and more |
| 28 | Joe Colantonio: interviews, talks, tutorials and Automation Guild Conference records on the topics of automation, security and performance testing |
| 29 | Sauce Labs: records of test automation meetups and conferences, online talks and tutorials on test automation |
What to listen?
A big reason for listening to podcasts is having productive time while driving to or from work. The audio test automation-specific episodes we suggest subscribing to are:
Where to ask questions?
If you have some questions about a specific tool, the first thing to do is to look through its documentation. For example, when working with Selenium, you can visit:
In situations when your questions aren’t answered with the official documentation, turn to active communities. There, you can search for the help of experienced test automation engineers:
| 36 | MoT Slack Group |
| 37 | MoT Discussions (The Club) |
| 38 | Selenium Users Google Group |
| 39 | Selenium GitHub Project |
| 40 | Selenium IRC Chat Room |
| 41 | Selenium Slack Channel |
Whom to follow?
Finally, you can learn about recent trends, tips and planned events on the topic by following the best test automation evangelists. We recommend to add the following accounts to your subscription list:
| 42 | Alan Page @alanpage QA Director at Unity Technologies, previously Microsoft’s Director of Test Excellence. Alan is the author of The “A” Word. Under the Covers of Test Automation and co-author of How We Test Software at Microsoft, the author of angryweasel.com and co-host of the A&B Testing podcast show. |
| 43 | Dan Cuellar @thedancuellar Software Engineering Manager at Apple, previously Head of Test Engineering at FOODit and Shazam. The creator of the Appium framework for mobile and desktop test automation. |
| 44 | John Ferguson Smart @wakaleo Freelance speaker and consultant in the domains of test automation, BDD and TDD. John is the author of “BDD in Action”, “Jenkins: The Definitive Guide” and “Java Power Tools”. In addition, John leads the development of innovative Serenity BDD, a test automation library. |
| 45 | Richard Bradshaw @FriendlyTester Senior Verification Engineer at Teleflex Incorporated, renowned speaker and trainer that geeks out on all things about software test automation. Richard is CEO of the Ministry of Testing, manages TestBash conferences and the Dojo online learning platform and develops his blog thefriendlytester.co.uk. |
| 46 | Angie Jones @techgirl1908 Test Automation Engineer, Senior Developer Advocate at Applitools, she used to work with IBM and Twitter. Angie is Director of the Test Automation University and an active speaker at software testing conferences all over the world. |
| 47 | Nikolay Advolodkin @Nikolay_A00 Test Automation Leader and Solution Architect at Sauce Labs, CEO and Test Automation Instructor at Ultimate QA, one of the top Selenium WebDriver Instructors. Nikolay was an active contributor to Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals and frequently blogs at TeachBeacon.com and SimpleProgrammer.com. |
| 48 | Gleb Bahmutov @bahmutov VP of Engineering at Cypress.io, has the personal blog with over 300 publications. |
| 49 | Kwo Ding @DingKwo Test Automation Consultant, the creator of the Mobile Testing Pyramid and Sonar WebDriver Plugin. |
| 50 | Bria Grangard @Bria_Grangard A popular expert, speaker and podcast host in the software testing field. Previously, Product Marketing Manager (TestComplete, QAComplete, CrossBrowserTesting and Hiptest) at SmartBear. |
| 51 | Paul Grizzaffi @pgrizzaffi Principal Automation Architect at Magenic, quality and automation leader, advisor to Software Test Professionals Conference (STPCon), member of the Industry Advisory Board of the Advanced Research Center for Software Testing and Quality Assurance (STQA) in the University of Texas. Paul is the author of responsibleautomation.wordpress.com. |
| 52 | Raghav Pal @AutomationSbS A test automation architect with over nine years of experience in the test automation field, popular teacher on test automation topics, the author of the Automation Step by Step channel. |
| 53 | Corina Pip @imalittletester QA & Automation Lead at Splend, popular test automation speaker and consultant. Corina is a creator of a waiter library for Selenium tests, author of imalittletester.com and “The Little Tester” comic series. |
Seeking To Start Your Test Automation with the Right Foundation?
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