The "A" Word
Free!
With Membership
$7.99
Suggested price

The "A" Word

Under the Covers of Test Automation

About the Book

If you've read my blog for the last few years, you've probably read everything here already (although without some much needed editing). This is a collection of blog posts from my blog - rearranged, edited and polished (a bit) and put into an ebook.

The book is free if you want - or you can pay (all proceeds go to the American cancer society). I just wanted to gather my thoughts on test automation in one place and share somewhere - and leanpub has been a fantastic tool in this trip.

I'll update the book as needed (including edits, as well as expansion on ideas if/when requested).

About the Author

Alan Page
Alan Page

Alan Page has been a software tester for nearly 20 years. He was the lead author on the book How We Test Software at Microsoft, contributed chapters for Beautiful Testing and Experiences of Test Automation: Case Studies of Software Test Automation . He also writes about a variety of software engineering subjects on his blog at http://angryweasel.com/blog.

Alan joined Microsoft as a member of the Windows 95 team, and since then has worked on a variety of Windows releases, early versions of Internet Explorer, and Office Lync. Notably, Alan served for over two years as Microsoft’s Director of Test Excellence.

Currently a Principal Software Design Engineer in Test (SDET) on the Xbox team, Alan spends his time designing and implementing test infrastructure and tests; and coaching and mentoring testers and test managers across the Xbox organization. Alan also leads company-wide quality and testing focused communities made up of senior engineering employees.

Table of Contents

    • Introduction
    • Testing: Failing to Succeed
    • The Robots are Taking Over
    • To Automate …?
    • The Coding Tester
    • GUI Shmooey
    • Design for GUI Automation
    • It’s (probably) a Design Problem
    • In the Middle
    • Test Design for Automation
    • Orchestrating Test Automation
    • LOL — UR AUTOMASHUN SUCKZ!
    • Exploring Test Automation
    • Musings on Test Design
    • Beyond Regression Tests
    • Testing with Code
    • More on Test Design
    • Coding, Testing, and the A word
    • Last word on the A word
    • Resources

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

80% Royalties. Earn $16 on a $20 book.

We pay 80% royalties. That's not a typo: you earn $16 on a $20 sale. If we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book or course for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub