<Interview With Anton Angelov On Automation Testing Strategy>

We have very humbled to have QA session with Anton Angelov, The CTO and Co-founder of Automate The Planet Ltd and the creator of BELLATRIX Test Automation Framework and MEISSA Distributed Test Runner. Bellatrix by Automate the Planet is a Software Company that focuses on developing robust test automation solutions. Prior to his business, Anton Angelov worked at Teleric (the biggest software company in Bulgaria) as a QA architect. He won the tag of ‘Best QA’about four times in Bulgaria. He also has a passion for writing technical articles and is featured at Dzone with over 3 million views. He is also the worldwide conference speaker and spoke at events about the common topics Selenium and Appium a couple of times in different countries from Poland, Russia, Netherlands, Ukraine to Serbia. Anton has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and Technologies from the Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria, including many more certifications.

Anton, thank you for joining us today. On behalf of BugRaptors, we are excited to have your thoughts with us through this interview and Q&A session.

Anton Angelov: I am also excited to be here, thank you.

Kanika Vatsyayan: I was kind of curious to know how you started your career in testing. May I?

Anton Anglelov: Sure.

Kanika: How did you get started in testing?

Anton: While I was in the technical university during my 3rd year, I also started taking classes in Bulgaria's leading software academy. At the end of the 1-year training there, there was a choice of profession - QA, DEV, or Support Engineer. After a presentation about the different jobs, I decided that the QA was the most interesting one.

Kanika: Can you please tell us about “Automate The Planet”? What was the idea behind it?

Anton: Seven years ago, while I was still working in my first company, I decided to share some interesting topics with the world, so I started writing blog posts. So, everything started as a personal project and gradually evolved into the consulting-training company it is now. But it took lots of effort. On the website, there are more than 300 articles. For seven years, I almost haven't missed a week without publishing a post.

Kanika: What tasks do you find most challenging in mobile automation?

Anton: Maybe automating more complex UI components like maps and similar. Handling stuff related to GPS, battery, and similar.

Kanika: I was just reading your article series on Strategy Design Pattern, Can you please give any message to our readers who want to implement the same while automating the test?

Anton: The strategy is just one of the many patterns that you can use. I believe before implementing a particular design pattern to read about all of them. Afterward, you will choose smartly whether you need a pattern or not and, if YES, which one to use. There are many articles on the Automate The Planet website to find detailed step-by-step implementations about each pattern. Also, in my Java and C# books about Design Patterns in automated testing, you will find a complete tutorial with explanations about how to use patterns for enhancing the quality of your automated tests.

Kanika: What problems does the BELLATRIX test automation framework solve? And, how to get started with it? Do you have any special tips and tricks to share with our readers?

Anton: BELLATRIX is an open-source automated testing framework that leverages popular tools and libraries such as Selenium, Appium, and WinAppDriver. You can use it to automate web, mobile, desktop, and API apps. It makes the tests more maintainable, stable, and readable. Also, it helps you solve many challenging problems such as handling test data, configurations, and many more. To get started, visit - https://bellatrix.solutions/. Also, there is comprehensive documentation. If you have further questions, you can always drop a line on LinkedIn.

Even if you don't want to use this particular framework but have the task to create your own, you can check the training I lead, or if you're going to study at your own pace, you can just read the 300+ free articles on Automate The Planet or check some of the books. Later we can get in touch on LinkedIn and discuss some problems.

Kanika: Can you tell me something about your new book? What is this book about?

Anton: Achieving high-quality test automation that brings value- you need to understand core programming concepts such as SOLID and the usage of design patterns. After you master them, the usual career transition is into more architecture roles, such as choosing the best possible approaches for solving particular test automation challenges. The series contains two books, one in C# and one in Java, teaching the same concepts but looking through the respective programming language's prism and using its technology stack.

Learn how to optimize and stabilize your flaky tests. Learn how to handle asynchronous web pages in your tests. Automatically deal with AJAX and jQuery. Improve Test Readability, Maintainability, Reusability, Extensibility by incorporating 10+ design patterns: Page Object Model, Facade, Decorator, Observer, Strategy, Singleton, Fluent Interface, Template Method, Abstract Factory, Factory Method, Repository, Lazy Load.

And much more. The books come with access to more than 20000+ lines of real-world code examples and video explanations to solidify your knowledge.

Kanika: Any remarks you want to share with the tester community of India?

Anton: Starting work is just the beginning of the journey. To be an excellent professional, you need to upgrade your knowledge constantly - reading blogs, going to conferences, participating in training, and reading books. But also an essential skill is to share your knowledge later with the community. So, I encourage you to ignore the fear and start blogging or trying to do presentations at your local meet-ups at the beginning. Later you can upgrade and start leading talks at big conferences when you have more experience.

Kanika: That was such an amazing and wonderful conversation Anton. Thank you very much for your incredible thoughts and time. Testing is going to go through radical changes in the digital era. In fact, it’s kind of intensified digital transformation because of the pandemic. Once again, thank you for joining us today on this fantastic discussion and I am looking forward to the partnership with Automated the Planet.

Anton: Well, thank you so much! Even I enjoyed this conversation today and hope to interact with you again.

Kanika: Thank you, you’re great!

We were pleasure taking the interview of great personality, Anton Angelov. If you also want to know about what qualities have helped Anton to be successful in the QA and Software Testing Industry, you can seize the opportunity and check out his profile on Linkedin, where he has showcased many more things about his success stories and achievements. To understand his services, upcoming events, business, tactics, transformation, you can visit his website. In his forthcoming webinars, he is going to help professionals and viewers know about the best way to create a Library for Auto-generating Test Cases from Automated Test Execution and many more exciting topics he will discuss online. You have the advantage of learning automated testing and business-specific things from Anton. Connect with him or have a chance to speak or meet with him.

Kanika Vatsyayan

Kanika Vatsyayan is Vice-President – Delivery and Operations at BugRaptors who oversees all the quality control and assurance strategies for client engagements. She loves to share her knowledge with others through blogging. Being a voracious blogger, she published countless informative blogs to educate audience about automation and manual testing.