2025 Testing Trends, Postman Gatling, AI Agents and More TGNS145

Do you know the top automation testing trends for 2025? How to use Postman with Gatling and why would you want to connect AI agents directly to web browsers? Find out in this episode of the Test Guild News show for the week of January 12th. So grab your favorite cup of coffee or tea and let's do this. And before we get into it, if you haven't already, please make sure to subscribe to Our Test Guild LinkedIn News Show Newsletter that I'll have a link for down below to never miss another episode. All right, first up, I just dropped my top trends for 2025. If you don't know, I release my annual automation Testing trends for the last it's been like, I don't know, 14 years or so this year. What I've done is I analyzed data from hundreds of interviews in a comprehensive automation testing survey I've been running since 2018-2024 with an average of 200 responses per year, revealing some really cool insights and shifts. This data also combines insights from our Test Guild webinars. We have about thousands of webinar participants through 2024, bunch of polls and things like that that provide a really clear view into where I think our industry is heading. So if you haven't already, I highly recommend you read or watch our video. You can check out the top eight trends I point out in this article using the link down below. And if you really want to learn how to implement many of these trends that I cover, don't forget to register for our annual online conference Automation Guild that takes place February 10th to the 14th to accelerate your career in the new year so you're not left behind. Definitely check it out and register once again using the links down below. Or if you've been following the show for any amount of time. You know I was a big fan of Spec Flow back in the day, but Gasper just made a major announcement on LinkedIn and that is Spec Flow, a widely utilized tool for behavior driven development within the. NET community, will reach its end of life in January of 2025. And this announce really underscores the need for organizations relying on SpecFlow to transition to the alternative solutions. And I think this development is really significant because specful has been pivotal in enabling collaboration between many developers, testers and non technical stakeholders that I know using a plain language syntax and really had a really tight integration with Visual Studio. But if you don't know, we announced this before. Rec and Roll is the replacement for SpecFlow for. NET. So if you haven't moved over yet. Definitely check out Rec and Roll as well and you can find out more about this announcement and more with the links down below. Also in the New year, if you're trying to learn more about doing API testing, I found a new open source tool that might help. And this was on Abhijeet's LinkedIn, who just announced a new open source tool called Playpy that offers software testers in local environments practice and refine their API testing skills. And the solution allows users to explore Multiple protocols like RESTful, GRPC, GraphQL and WebSockets all on their own machines without requiring an Internet connection. And this tool, available via command line interface and a docker image, comes preloaded with realistic examples such as inventory management, task management and live chat. And it really aims to streamline hands on workshops, boot camps or individual practice sessions by simplifying setup and providing meaningful real world test scenarios. Real really cool solution. If you're a tester, you should definitely check this out to help gain access to a straightforward, offline friendly playground to shop in your API testing techniques. So if you're a tester, you definitely should check this out to help gain access to a straightforward, offline friendly playground to shop in your API testing techniques across multiple protocols. Also some news from Applitools. They've just announced the release of Autonomous 2.1, a really big update that enhances its test management capabilities by introducing advanced AI powered features. Autonomous 2.1, according to this post, aims to streamline the testing process by further integrating machine learning algorithms, enabling testers to achieve higher accuracy in visual testing. This update also offers improved dashboard functionality for real time analysis, allowing QA teams to make data driven decisions more efficiently. And also notably, the release facilitates better collaboration between developers and testers by integrating seamlessly with popular CIC pipelines, ultimately aiming to reduce time to market for application releases. And another LinkedIn post that caught my attention was by id about browser use, which I've never heard of before. So what is it? Well, let's dive in. So this is a new software solution which promises to streamline automation by connecting AI agents directly to web browsers. It's built on Python, which was one of my top trends in 2025. You definitely should check out in that link and JavaScript. And this tool allows automated browsing, data scraping and online interactions through large language models. It functions seamlessly with any LLM supported by langchan, such as Cloudsonnet, OpenAI models and Google Gemini, enabling testers to quickly adopt and integrate advanced AI features into their automation workflows and developers have demonstrated various use cases including research, job hunting, travel planning and document automation. And by leveraging LLM driven instructions, browsers can collect and organize data across multiple sites, open new tabs, create or edit documents, and even initiate job applications, all without manual oversight. And as automation engineers, we know these capabilities have been around for a while, but it's just another way that you could potentially save time and consistently make improvements in your process by automated things that may not have been automatable before. So if this sounds cool, you may want to evaluate browser used as a means to cut down on manual repetitive tasks, particularly those involving data collection inform interactions. Its capabilities with leading LLMs may expand the possibilities for other type of more testing functionalities around test coverage or regression checks or things like that. Because it's open source is definitely something you should check out. Let me know your thoughts about it in the comments down below. All right, so this next announcement seems to be the most controversial news item of this week, and it is Agile Alliance Joins Project Management Institute so I think this is a significant development for agile and project management communities. The Agile alliance has announced its merger with the Project Management Institute, and this move aims to integrate agile methodologies more deeply into project management practices by joining forces. In theory, organizations seek to provide enhanced resources, training and standards for professionals across both fields, potentially impacting software development and testing environments as well. And this merger is expected to harmonize agile principles with established project management frameworks, fostering a more collaborative ecosystems. And this collaboration may lead to new tools and methodologies that could streamline testing processes, enhance agility in software projects, and improve overall project execution. But if you really wanted to get a tester's opinion and what this all means, you definitely want to check out Matt Hoyes's response to this. He wrote a really good BL blog post on this as well on his thoughts and what it all means, so definitely check that out as well. All right, so I'm always on the lookout for real world scenarios of people doing things with AI, and here's one by Amit and also turned me on to a new tool I never heard of before as well. So amit announced on LinkedIn that he had never previously built a website and launched a fully responsive site for his software testing project Testron in just two hours. And he says he achieved this by leveraging AI driven tools including rollout sites and hosting services from netlify. And he also mentions aside from an AI subscription to Claude, the site went from concept to live deployment with minimal costs and this Rapid turnaround underscores the growing role of AI in streamlining software development and testing workflows. Also, I never heard of Testron before. So what is it? Well, let's take a look. So it looks to be a chrome extension for test automation code generation that uses AI. And it looks like the extension was designed specifically for test automation engineers, functional testers and web developers to create playwright tests. And according to this document, according to them, not me, it could generate production ready test code with just a few clicks. How true is that? I don't know. Try it for yourself and let me know your thoughts in the comments down below. So I was away for a little bit, so this article is a little bit older, it's from last month, but it's all about the evolution of SRE at Google. I think it's important for you to know about so this takes a deep dive that provides insight into the evaluation of Google's site reliability engineering practices. And this originally was designed to manage in Google's vast infrastructure and the SRE model has undergone considerable changes to better align with modern software development needs. Key enhancements include a heightened focus on automation and proactive analysis, allowing for earlier detection and mitigations for potential system failures. These updates aim to improve overall system reliability and efficiency, factors that are crucial in software testing environments. And last up, do you have a bunch of Postman API tests and you want to start getting into performance testing? Well, here's a great resource on how you can actually integrate Postman with Gatling. This is from James. It's actually a recent instructional video he created that details integration of Postman with Gatling for API testing and it highlights how this combination enhances testing for software developers and testers. Really simplifies the load testing process, making a really valuable approach for teams looking to enhance their current API testing capabilities. Really good stuff James. Thank you for that and for links of everything of value we covered in this news episode. Head over to those links in the comments down below. So that's it for this episode of the Test Guild News Show. I'm Joe. My mission is help you succeed in creating end to end full stack pipeline automation awesomeness. As always, test everything and keep the good. Cheers.