BugRaptors Tech Talks Featuring Dmytro Shpakovskyi

Welcome to BugRaptors Tech Talks. My name is Rajeev Verma and I am the Project Manager at a CMMI Level 5 Certified Software Testing Company for over eight years. This time, I would like to introduce Mr. Dmytro Shpakovskyi as our tech talk expert who would share his knowledge on Quality testing while highlighting some insights from his book Modern Web Testing with TestCafe. 

Dmytro has over a decade of experience in Quality Assurance, Test Automation, and Software-as-a-Service industries. He is proficient in End-to-End, Load, and API Test Automation, and he has shared his vision of Quality Assurance at several Software Testing Conferences.  

Besides, he is a Packt Published author and is certified by the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB). Apart from this, He is a polyglot and has command over four different languages, including Advanced English, Basic French, Ukrainian (Native), and Russian (Native).   

During his career, Dmytro was in charge of the Quality Assurance Automation of 60+ highly scalable web applications and services. Besides this, he has built and maintained numerous test automation frameworks, managed distributed teams of QA automation engineers, and helped engineers to convert to automated testing.  

You can often find Dmytro creating and open-sourcing new test automation frameworks, mentoring other QA engineers or exploring new tools and techniques for automated testing. He even shares his experience at stijit.com  

In addition to that, Dmytro authored a book "Modern Web Testing with TestCafe" - a no-nonsense guide to getting started with TestCafe quickly by building a complete test suite while learning the core concepts of test automation with TestCafe.  

Say Hi to him on Linkedin and learn more about Dmytro in his professional space.   

Have you found his story interesting? Indeed it is ? Our team at BugRaptors also find him very interesting, knowledgeable, and professional when read his biography for the first time. I’ve found very similar interests in him. Moreover, His professionalism and test automation expertise gave me immense confidence to call him for an interview. As you know, at BugRaptors Tech Talks, we love to communicate with people all over the world and invite Test Automation Experts, SDETs, Software Testing Companies to join us on our platform. 

Similarly, by continuing our culture of community building, this time, I, Rajeev, took the initiative to connect with Dmytro on the behalf of BugRaptors and approached him for a quick online interview. We had a great discussion about his book, pre-pandemic testing, future of QA, and much more. So, let’s jump to the interview and check out what his thoughts and perception on QA & Software Testing at BugRaptors Tech Talks.   

Rajeev: Can you share some insights of your book- Modern Web Testing with TestCafe? 

Dmytro: I wrote "Modern Web Testing with TestCafe" as a result of processing and accumulating a significant amount of knowledge about test automation with TestCafe. I felt that it is a good time to share my findings and experience with the community - to show the real-world examples of how to develop and use a lightweight and simple-to-understand testing framework on a real-world project. 

The book is structured in a "start from basics and enhance bit by bit while maintaining simplicity" style - from learning the basic concepts to setting up a test environment and writing end-to-end tests following the best practices. The main goal was to give my readers a faster way to learn TestCafe. I really hope that this knowledge will help test automation engineers to hit the ground running and start writing tests with TestCafe in a fast and easy manner. 

Rajeev: What do you wish You’d known pre-pandemic to do a better job in your role during 2020? 

Dmytro: Two things can be outlined here. The first one is how to deal with a huge amount of pressure and stay positive in uncertain conditions. The second - how plan the amount of time to dedicate towards reaching each of your yearly goals, and then be benevolent to yourself while following the plan. Sometimes it's not so easy to accept those, but the key is to keep trying. 

Rajeev: What are your views about testing in production? 

Dmytro: My philosophy is that it's impossible to test everything (unless you have infinite time and infinite resources), so the best thing you can do is to mitigate the risks and lower the amount of bugs that can slip to production. In such a scheme of things it's crucial to catch bugs as early as possible, so ideally automated tests should be triggered on each pull request, and then additional testing should be performed in the isolated staging environments. Depending on the circumstances there can be cases where testing in production is the only possible option (for example when testing some complex third-party integrations) - and it's fine as long as everybody in the team understands the limitations, consequences and risks that accompany such approach. 

Rajeev: What do you recommend more? API test or End to end UI tests? 

Dmytro: I think that if you can do something in a faster and less flaky way - you should do it. If some test cases can be covered with API tests by checking the work of particular endpoints instead of the long chains of actions in end-to-end tests then that is the way. But usually there is a number of cases that need to be tested from a user's perspective - by interacting with UI in a same manner as a real person would, and that's where end-to-end test automation shines. So, I would say that API tests compliment end-to-end tests and vice versa. There is a number of decent tools to solve your testing needs and you should combine them or select wisely depending on a particular problem that you are solving. 

Rajeev: How test automation improves productivity and efficiency? 

Dmytro: First of all, test automation reduces the amount of similar repetitive actions that functional test engineers have to suffer through. It's usually a good idea to automate the happy path scenarios and regression checks. I'm pretty sure that human time should be spent on more interesting tasks - for example investigating some complex scenarios and testing complicated edge cases. In addition to that, automated tests are executed much faster than manual testing, and the faster a team gets the results, the faster any potential bugs can be fixed and then a more stable release can be pushed to production. 

Rajeev: What is the future of QA automation? 

Dmytro: I would assume that with test automation tools emerging and getting more advanced, QA Engineers and Software Developers in Test will be getting more time to expand their knowledge and skills horizontally - there are so many directions to follow: end-to-end testing, API testing, load/performance testing, configuring infrastructure - just to name a few. 

Rajeev: What kind of techniques do you use to manage your workload? 

Dmytro: The recipe that I would advice to try can be dried out to 4 steps: 

1. Destructure your workload - split big and complex tasks into small and simple subtasks. 

2. Block chunks of time to concentrate on a particular subtask. 

3. Continue pushing forward and sort it out step by step. 

4. Take your time to digest the knowledge that you gain. 

Rajeev: What advice would you give to aspiring testers who look forward to speaking at events or conferences? 

Dmytro: Don't be afraid to share your thoughts but at the same time keep your mindset open. Be it a speaker or a conference attendee - you learn when you listen and you learn when you speak - don't stop being curious and sharpening your skills as it's what pushes the progress forward. 

Rajeev: What are the best upcoming conferences testers should attend? 

Dmytro: Among some of the things that pandemic actually amplified is the possibility to work remotely and the variety of online events. For the testing and test automation topics I would outline: 

• Automation Guild (https://guildconferences.com/guild-conferences/) - with specialized conferences for different directions of test automation (SecureGuild, PerfGuild, AutomationGuild); 
• TestFest  - with a set of conferences adjusted to multiple timezones  (TestFest UK, TestFest USA, TestFest India, TestFest Australia, TestFest South-Africa, etc.); 
• Test Automation and Digital QA Virtual Summit (https://www.testingmind.com/event/) - with multiple time formats adjusted for USA. 

Rajeev: Dmytro, Thank You for your time. Within few minutes, you’ve helped me know many more things about you and related to the Software Testing Domain & QA. I am looking forward to catching up with you again on another day. I hope you’ll join us at BugRaptors Tech Talks and help our readers know a bit more about Software Testing and QA.  

Dmytro: Why not? Rajeev Definitely. We’ll schedule any event, workshop, or interview in the future. Till then, Stay Safe.  

Rajeev: Yes, sure, you too.   

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