[quality_practice]
Quality Practice
A shared vocabulary for how Excel Core teaches testing craft: where automation belongs, how roadmaps stay honest, and how defects read like engineering briefs.
Test pyramid, annotated
We use the pyramid as a negotiation tool, not a dogma. The diagram below labels the feedback loops we emphasise in cohorts.
Automation roadmap
Roadmaps start with observable pain: failing deploys, recurring regressions, or unreadable CI logs. We map candidate suites to those pains, estimate maintenance owners, and explicitly mark experiments that may be discarded. No roadmap leaves our workshops without a “not now” column—scope honesty keeps automation credible.
- Instrument: ensure traces, structured logs, and failure artifacts exist before new suites.
- Shard: split long UI jobs; keep API contracts closer to producers.
- Publish: annotate PRs with check intent so reviewers know what broke.
- Review quarterly: retire checks that duplicate faster signals.
Defect communication
Defects are temporary APIs between testers and builders. We coach a three-block structure: minimal reproduction, observed vs expected with evidence, and proposed impact class (customer, data integrity, operational). Optional fourth block captures what you already ruled out—saves engineers from repeating your experiments.
> repro_steps.md
> evidence/ (trace.zip, screenshot.png)
> impact_note.txt
> ruled_out.txt (optional)