As software products and services are becoming more complex, it requires more comprehensive testing for identifying the defects and pursuing the necessary fixes before it becomes available for public release. The QA process needs to be planned out and monitored so that it can be successful. The most effective way to track the efficacy of QA activities is to use well-thought-through metrics.

The approach to test via comparison of multiple API responses between production and test code versions is very effective and produces the required results, release over release. Improvements and changes, however, are needed to address changing needs. This is true for most if not all tech solutions; the economics principle ‘Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility’ also applies to software. A tech solution that excited stakeholders when first introduced could become stale very soon. A revamp or a new solution is needed to match evolving expectations.

Adopting a machine learning-driven self-healing technique in test automation can prevent flaky tests, reduce test failures, and save time on code maintenance. Self-healing is one of the essential factors for successfully performing continuous testing in the DevOps model.

Whether to use Cucumber and BDD (Behavior Driven Development) is an old topic and a lot has been shared regarding this already. However I believe many times it’s just the high level technical reasons that make it to the forefront of the argument on how effective it is, and I want to address the topic from a holistic point of view and not just technical.