Marcus Merrell

WhaleShark Media, Inc.

A test architect at WhaleShark Media, Marcus Merrell has written UI and API test frameworks for several products since 2001, most notably at Peoplefluent. Marcus is obsessed with code design and holds sacred the philosophy that test frameworks should be approached, developed, and tested just as carefully as the production software they seek to examine. The successful demonstration of these principles has led to an intense focus on collaboration between testers and developers, and to a deep appreciation for code that is at once simple and sophisticated: an API for testers which is interface-agnostic, reusable, and universal to many problem sets. Read about this philosophy at assertsmith.com, a collection of ideas and open-source projects about testing.

Speaker Presentations

Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 12:45pm

Test Automation

Designing Self-maintaining UI Tests for Web Applications

Test automation scripts are in a constant state of obsolescence. New features are added, changes are made, and testers learn about these changes long after they've been implemented. Marcus Merrell helped design a system in which a "model" is created each time a developer changes code that affects the UI. That model is checked against the suite of automated tests for validity. Changes that break the tests are apparent to the developer before his code is even checked in. Then, when features are added, the model is regenerated and automation can immediately address brand-new areas of the UI.