Two years ago, as creation of a new dashboard for wealth advisors was just starting, I joined in to shape its future for testing as a manual tester and test lead, responsible for connecting all testing aspects. In this talk, I share my lessons learned on how we keep our systems ticking with dozens of nightly tests runs, yet relying on manual testing for finding other bugs. 

This talk shows one example of a connected stack for manual and automated tests, and how we’ve come to shape them. We go through my story of handling flaky tests, growing test data, mobile testing and continuous improvement. I started testing in agile way, namely with the most familiar tasks, expanding my competence and test coverage by each new iteration. Through reflection I found better ways to design tests, to maintain focus on testing my own test object, leaving dependencies to other components aside. I recognized the limits of automation and realized that human testers need to be entertained.

I share my story to inspire you to share yours, and for us all to learn from one another. Especially if you are a manual test lead, and your project is fresh - this talk is for you.