Experience report: The Tester Tribe London Meet Up 04/02/2025
After a day of work I went up to London to speak at the Test Tribe meetup. What was wonderful was a women in testing line up. Parveen Khan was the host and Gayathri Mohan did a talk on Threat modelling. It was a small, yet very impactful event for me with all the discussions that were had after the talks.
What stood out to me in Gayathri’s talk is a mention of how it’s not only about Pen Tests. I’ve observed a problem where people assume that security is ticked off by a Pen Test and in fact, there is so much more that can be done, which Gayathri went on to describe. One of the descriptions was around the STRIDE framework that can help explore security threats. Overall it was an important reminder to think about security early and use frameworks like STRIDE to help us generate test ideas. Unfortunately I didn’t take any more notes on this talk, which I now regret. I suggest you go follow Gayathri and check out her book on Full stack testing. One that is on my list to read this year.
The talk I did was on Automation Strategy and Tips to Get Started. It shared my experience of building a Test automation strategy, challenges & solutions and tips to get started. It was a one off talk that I decided to do, which means I will not be repeating it. I like doing this as it’s a challenge and is also helping me figure out what I enjoy talking about the most.
I shared a problem that often I observe people jumping into writing automated tests without thinking about why they’re automating. Potentially wasting business time by creating tests that add no value. A game changer for me was when I started promoting Automation Feasibility Studies in the workplace. Prompting people to think about what they’re automating. You could go with your gut feel, however, what is interesting is that your gut feel might not be right, which is why it’s important to do the exercise.
I also discussed creating a Test automation strategy as a team. Otherwise it becomes a big mess with everyone doing their own thing. A strategy helps you align as a team and work towards a common goal. So I highly recommend getting everyone in a room to agree.
The questions I proposed were to think about were — Why? What? Who? When? This keeps it simple and gives you a foundation to work on.
I’d like to thank my network for providing some great learning resources, which I’ll post below. There is so much out there that you could learn. For me, I advise you to focus on what you need to learn in your context, rather than trying to do it all.
Overall what I enjoyed the most was speaking with people after the talk and learning about their contexts. It was an enjoyable evening.
Resources to help you get started in Test automation:
- You tube talk by Angie Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL-_pnICmGY
- What to automate worksheet by Dorothy Graham https://drive.google.com/file/d/11JVP8z7KHYEsxEqkO1wul5tPfLAk1TsG/view
- Test automation University: https://testautomationu.applitools.com/learningpaths.html
- Test Automation Patterns
- How to Test a Time Machine: A Practical Guide to test architecture and automation by Noemi Ferrer
- Learn to Code — for Free | Codecademy
- Free tutorials on Guru99
- Experience report by Julie Moseley
- The community’s guide to Test Automation by Ministry of Testing
- LinkedIn groups — Selenium, Playwright, Cypress
- Blog that focuses on Playwright — Selenium to Playwright migration
- Playwright by Butch Mayhew
- Robot Framework cookbook
- Mike Harris’s blog posts on Test Automation
- Create a Team Test Automation Strategy by Anne-Marie
