The Invisible Screws of IT

 A teacher once gave her students a test with just one question a drawing of a chair and a simple ask:

“What’s the most important part of this chair?”
Everyone answered: the legs, the seat, the backrest.
The teacher smiled and said: “You’re all wrong. It’s the screws, the parts you don’t see. Without them, the chair collapses.”
That lesson holds true in Information Technology too.
In our world, the “screws” are often invisible, the silent contributors that hold entire systems together:
o The QA engineer ensuring stability before release
o The DevOps pipelines quietly deploying your code at 2 AM
o The sysadmins maintaining uptime
o The documentation nobody notices until it’s missing
o The test cases, backups, or monitoring scripts that prevent disasters
These aren’t flashy roles or features, but without them, the entire “chair” of IT collapses.
So today, take a moment to appreciate your invisible screws, the people, the processes, and the quiet acts of diligence that keep everything running.
Because in tech, as in life, it’s the unseen support that keeps us standing strong.

Python Pandas vs Excel Pivot Tables

Rethinking Data Extraction in the Modern Analytics Era

Spotting Anomalies in Data with Python & Pandas

Anomalies in datasets are more than just “odd number sets” they can signal

Pandas in Software Testing – More Than Just a Data Science Tool

When we think of Pandas, most of us imagine data analysis, machine learning pipelines, or big data crunching. But did you know that Pandas can be a QA engineer’s secret weapon?

Fast Test Data Preparation

 As software testers, we often spend a lot of time creating test data. Names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth… the list never ends.

Pickling & Unpickling in Python, A Hidden Gem for QA Engineers

As QA professionals, we often focus on test execution, automation, and reporting. But behind the scenes, efficient data handling can save us hours of repetitive work. That’s where Pickling and Unpickling in Python come into play.

Monkey Patching in Programming, A QA’s Secret Superpower

In the world of testing, we often face situations where:

A dependency isn’t available yet.
A third-party API is too costly or unreliable for repeated calls.

AI/ML & the “Small Wonder” Connection

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, many of us grew up watching Small Wonder, the sitcom about Vicki, a human-like robot created by engineer Ted Lawson.

Starting Your Journey in Data Science with Python

When I first looked at data science, it felt like standing at the foot of a mountain statistics, machine learning, algorithms, endless buzzwords. Where do you even begin?

Understanding Test Strategy and Test Plan

 

Choosing the Right Automation Testing Framework: TestNG vs. Cucumber vs. Robot Framework

 

Unlocking the Power of Web Robots with XPath: A Practical Guide

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, the need for accurate and fast data gathering has become essential across industries. Enter web robots (or web scrapers), which automate the process of extracting data from websites. At the core of efficient web robots is XPath (XML Path Language), a powerful syntax used to navigate and identify specific elements on a webpage.

Comprehensive Guide to API Testing Using Postman

APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are the backbone of modern web and mobile applications, enabling data exchange between applications, services, and users. As a tester, ensuring the reliability, functionality, and performance of APIs is crucial. Postman, a powerful API testing tool, has become the go-to for testers due to its user-friendly interface and robust capabilities. In this guide, we’ll dive into API testing using Postman, covering the fundamentals, setup, types of testing, and some best practices.

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What is Postman?

Tips to build your test data

Let us see the different types of test data:

Test data types

a. Application configuration data

Your application likely needs test data to function (or even launch). Examples of application configuration data include the information to connect to database(s), admin user name and password and server information (e.g. email server) in order to send email notifications.

What types of testing should you perform?

There are many kinds of testing that one hears about. You would likely know about many types of testing e.g. white box testing and black box testing, unit testing, integration testing, system testing, system integration testing and so on. The types of testing that would be performed on the application are usually identified in the test planning phase. If you wish to know which kinds of testing are suitable in your project, consider the following questions:

Sample database test plan

Here are some tips to create a good database test plan:

1. Database testing can get complex. It may be worth your while if you create a separate test plan specifically for database testing.

Regression testing

First, the basics. The term "regression" is used to describe the decay, weakening or degeneration of software. Software is modified to add enhancements to it, fix known defects, make performance improvements, make the code more maintainable or make the code compliant to patterns. But, software can regress when it is modified. This can happen in a number of ways:

a. The faulty design is re-used to create an enhancement

How to test software without any requirements?

You have been handed an application with no requirements. You are supposed to test it. Can you do it? Sure, you can. Check the following behaviors first.

• Does the application launch?
• Does the application have a help/ demo file? You can find abundant information in the help/ demo file to help you design your test cases.

Test Strategy: How to create a powerful test strategy?

Let us begin with discussing what is a Test Strategy! As you know, Strategy means using the resources at one's disposal to achieve the desired objectives effectively. Test strategy means the plan that details how the testing objectives would be met effectively.

Test Automation Framework features

A Test Automation Framework commonly consists of the implementation of certain concepts and code that gives a jump-start or provides support to one or more test automation projects. Before you design or enhance your Test Automation Framework, you should identify the objectives that you want to achieve with it.

Test Automation Framework features

The desired features of your Automation Framework may include: