_edited.jpg)
Zoopla Work
January was a busy month as we finished off end of year conversations to highlight impacts and/or achievements for the last year. With the help of the Quality Engineering team, we were also able to get the business case for LambdaTest approved. LambdaTest is a cloud-based cross browser testing tool that lets you test your web and mobile applications on various browsers, versions and devices. With the size of our engineering team increasing and our use cases evolving, our current cross browser testing tool needed to be upgraded. After a thorough business case, we've decided that LambdaTest will be able to give us the most benefits.
The product team that I'm part of also introduced a hackathon to find the best solution for accurately matching listings to properties. I spent this time trying to learn more about the listings data that we received and also explored a Python fuzzy matching library called fuzzywuzzy to determine the match accuracy of listings. I also helped the team by producing a concise test data investigation as to what are the different listing formats that we should expect and a high level decision as to whether we should match it to a property or not.
We've also kick started the first work for the Test Tooling subgroup in our Communities of Practice and there's some progress already on how we can use NX with Cypress :)
Community Work
This month, I spoke at an event hosted by TestTribe to talk about how to Leverage Cypress Beyond Functional Tests. In this session, I gave a quick overview as to what types of testing you can cover with Cypress, how you can use Cypress for visual testing, things to consider when doing visual testing in general and a code walkthrough on how to integrate various visual testing plugins. If you want to watch the recording, I have added the video below.
I was also supposed to share my thoughts in a webinar hosted by Applitools with Anand Bagmar, Alex Rybkin and Eran Kinsbruner however I was feeling unwell so I decided to skip the panel and rest up. The event has been recorded and if you are interested to watch the discussion, then you can find the link here - 2022's Most Popular Programming Languages for UI Automation.
Personal Development
📚 This month, I read The Chimp Paradox by Prof. Steve Peters which was an excellent read to help you understand how your brain works and how you can manage your "chimp" (I still have to name my chimp!) and emotions. I also read Starting your Software Testing Career by Nicola Lindgren which I highly recommend to anyone who's looking to start their Software Testing career. I also started reading The Complete Software Tester by Kristin Jackvony which is jam packed with useful tips on how to test various features and tips to uncover edge case scenarios.
🎧 I consistently listened to various podcast episodes every day. This has been my go to habit as part of my morning walk after dropping Gabby off to school.
🏋🏽♀️ I started #100DaysOfMove again with other people from the testing community which means I've been consistently exercising and hitting my step goal of 10,000 steps every day apart from 1 day where I was feeling unwell. I've also completed the Energise workout plan from Team Body Project.
Iron Mind Challenge
This month, I did the Iron Mind Challenge! For the past 31 days, it's been cold showers everyday, daily exercise, journalling, no alcohol and pick a diet of your choice. I decided to do the no sugar diet because it's something that I really struggle with. I did struggle a bit especially with the diet and experienced a lot of headaches in the first week. The cold shower was the most difficult task! It wasn't a perfect 31 days like I hoped it would be but I'd like to think that I did really well. It's the first time in a while where I've checked all the habits in my habit tracker consistently.
I'll keep these habits again in the upcoming months but have some days to treat myself 🙂
January Favourites
Taking Gabby to Winter Wonderland
Seeing one of my oldest friends from high school again!
Taking Gabby and her cousin to Sealife Aquarium for Gabby's pre-birthday weekend.
Completing the Iron Mind challenge (though not perfect but I did my best 🙂)
Sleepover with friends and eating "squid adobo"
Having delicious steaks!