I think I moved blogs?

Hi all... I've been trying out tumblr.com for a month or so now for my blogging-ish outlet and have been really digging it. For my 7 followers out there, I think I've made the decision to post solely over there--check it at http://musicismyeverest.tumblr.com. I've actually moved all my posts from here to there too!

Seven Steps to Test Automation Success

In starting a new test automation group at work, I started doing some industry research to get some do/don't ideas. I really, really dislike the idea of GUI x,y coordinate automation; other GUI object-aware automation tools seem to be pricey and still seem like tons of maintenance and really distanced from testing the real meat of most apps. Most info that I've found on the topic has either dealt with things at the GUI level (probably since that's "easiest" to implement, despite being difficult to maintain), or at the unit level--while these focuses certainly have their merits, I was looking for info on the level in between those things; Google calls this the "medium" level.

I found this article by Brett Pettichord called "Seven Steps to Test Automation Success", where he talks about the difficulties in automating tests, and I really think he hits a lot of nails on the head. He argues that in developing automate tests, you should really treat your work like that of software development, then discusses his seven steps:

1. Improve the Testing Process
   
2. Define Requirements
   
3. Prove the Concept
   
4. Champion Product Testability
   
5. Design for Sustainability
   
6. Plan for Deployment
   
7. Face the Challenges of Success
   

In each step, Brett focuses on laying lots on the table--and a lot of times things that I hadn't really processed as stuff that needed to be on the table. I like how he consistently hints at making the app under test testable, thus driving the ease of use, not just for automaters & testers, but for users as well. I think he does a wonderful job describing how test automation teams can bridge the gap between both development and Black Box testing, as I think this is definitely a challenge that I'm going to face in building my team.

All in all, there's tons of meat in this article, so take it in sections or get a cup of coffee and get comfy, but either way I think this is going to be a reference of mine for quite some time now.

Ruby Net::HTTP Cheat Sheet

I think this will prove to be a good resource--especially since I don't use this library that often. Hope you find it useful...
Net::HTTP Cheat Sheet