If you ’ re in package development, you knowStack Overflow. The beloved platform serve over 100 million developers every month, helping people establish their skills, parcel knowledge, and grow their careers. But maintaining a complex and mature product like Stack isn ’ t easy, especially as the squad introduces new offer like asynchronous knowledge management and collaboration toolStack Overflow for Teams. As a pocket-sized team with big impingement, Stack Overflow demand a software testing and quality engineering strategy that help them both conserve their 13 year old codebase and travel quickly to grow new offerings. Their search for a new software testing resolution led them to mabl. & nbsp;

VP of Product Engineering Dale Cook and Software Engineer Meredith Hatzenbuehler share how test mechanisation is enable the Stack Overflow team to construct a best software evolution organisation and better product quality at. & nbsp;

Maximizing the Value of Software Testing with Test Automation

Stack Overflow ’ s mature codebase and growing production offerings meant that Dale and Meredith had specific motivation for a new test automation solution. The team ask a test automation that could match the pace of development, yet adapt the nuances of their complex product. Meredith begin experiment with different solutions to best realise how each would fit into Stack Overflow ’ s engineering process. After exploring a range of options, she and Dale made their final decision.

Dale explain their criteria: ” We found that mabl was a clear winner. There were other package testing tools that allow for the same leisurely trial creation that mabl does, but they be n't execute. They were dull in the way that they work, so although we could build tests really fast, the tests themselves were not particularly fast. But the thing that really sold us on mabl was its ability to mix with our engineering workflow. Not just with building tests, and getting mabl integrated into our CI/CD pipelines and that kind of thing. But integration with quality engineering workflows, so that engineers can be run mabl tests, not but the unit test, not just their integration tests, but actual mabl examination as constituent of their workflow. That was a genuinely powerful thing. ” & nbsp;

The full benefits of mabl, easier test creation, faster trial execution, and more integrated workflows with Stack ’ s CI/CD pipeline, have do it potential for Meredith and Dale ’ s team to make concrete progress towards their goals. & nbsp;

Less Time Software Testing, More Time Building

You may not realize it as a Stack Overflow or Stack Overflow for Teams user, but the engineering squad is relatively small compared to the complexness and impact of their products. As many software pros know, an effective tryout automation strategy can be the make-or-break factor in introducing new features oftentimes or being lodge in sempiternal production hold. When rethinking their software testing partner, Dale and Meredith were acutely aware of maximizing engineering resources. & nbsp;

As Stack Overflow ’ s VP of Product Engineering, Dale was peculiarly focused on using test mechanisation to help engineers concenter on edifice, not secure: “ We want engineers to be build new things and doing new thing that they ’ re interested in. How do we build a really racy testing program for a complex ware without having to take a lot of engineering resources? ” & nbsp; & nbsp;

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Implementing mabl ’ s low-code test mechanization platform allowed Stack Overflow to create a pure cycle of try - bug breakthrough - bug firmness - higher quality deployments. With a better software testing process backed by trial mechanization, they ’ ve been able to create a highly efficient try workflow that do collaboration much easier. & nbsp;

Communication, Collaboration, and Replication

Before most of us were act in sweatpants and worrying about which Zoom backgrounds to use, Stack Overflow was a distributed team with fellow around the world. Creating sustainable workflow that can adapt across different time zones and trim miscommunications was a must, especially when it came to production quality. Mabl ’ s robust set ofintegrations and reporting featureproved to be an unexpected resource for handle the handoff of tests and defects. & nbsp;

Meredith noted that her team relies heavily on the contextual info that can be added to automated tests in mabl: & nbsp;

“ I 've be surprise by how much value we 've gotten out of thing like screenshots, test stairs, network information, the DOM, et cetera. That ’ s helped us cooperate with other teams. For example, if an SRE needs to tread in, I can simply give them mabl certification so they can log in, and aspect at the tryout. And they ’ ll have just what they need. Whereas before, there would probably be back and forth discussions since we wouldn ’ t constantly get such a detailed platter with other case of automated testing. That cringle of solving job has decidedly get much more efficient. ”

More efficient test automation direct to faster bug detection and, ultimately, a best software development organization. The next challenge is scaling Stack Overflow ’ s new quality technology strategy across the entire product. & nbsp;

For Meredith, scaling with lineament way diving into the mabl features project to make your test mechanisation strategy leisurely to grow and cope. helped her team shift focus off from a product-level focus to a component-level focus, which was a much more efficient approach, as many components get be reused across multiple Stack Overflow projects in its 13 year history. Though her team is focus on automating tests for the Stack Overflow for Teams product, the library of reusable flows will help former Stack colleagues chop-chop get machine-controlled testing underway for their own projects. & nbsp; And when they do, they ’ ll hold an organized, easy-to-navigate & nbsp; constitute by Meredith to create quality engineering adoption seamless. & nbsp;

Building a Better Engineering Organization

So what ’ s following for mabl at Stack Overflow? Dale shared his thoughts: & nbsp;

“ We continue to imagine about how we can make a best product for us internally, so that it 's easier for engineers to build things, adopt more mechanization, and maintain a better codebase. & nbsp; That kind of clobber allows us to move faster in our product releases. So over the future twelvemonth, we 're proceed to spend a lot of resources doing that, which we 're very unrestrained about. We believe it 's going to have an incredibly important impact on the next growth of Stack Overflow. ”

for mabl Experience 2023 to see industry leaders like Dale and Meredith share their stories of software testing and lineament engineering. & nbsp;