100 days action plan to become a QA UI Automation Engineer

Overview

This blog post outlines a comprehensive 100-day action plan to become a proficient QA UI Automation Engineer. It includes a learning path, resources, and practical steps to master the necessary skills in UI automation testing.

• Week 1: Setting up your machine, know our processes and learning programs
• Week 2: Revising / Learning Git
• Week 3: Completing Git Learning and Git Evaluation
• Week 4 and 5: Basics of HTML, CSS & JavaScript & evaluation
• Week 6: Get familiar with TypeScript
• Week 7 and 8: Understanding Playwright Basics & TypeScript Evaluation
• Week 9 and 10: Playwright Advanced Concepts
• Week 11 and 12: Playwright Best Practices and Playwright Evaluation

Week 1: Setting up your machine, know our processes and learning programs

Your first week with us is going to be all about setting up your machine and various online accounts, getting familiar with Crownstack's processes, learning programs, and start with revising Git.

Setting up your machine and various accounts

To get started, you need to set up your machine and various accounts that will be essential for your work. Here's a checklist to help you through the process:

1. Install Latest Ubuntu: We highly recommend if you haven't already, download and install latest Ubuntu version on your machine. You can seek help from your team if you encounter any issues.
2. Setup Official Github Account: Create your official Github account using the email address given to you by Crownstack. This will be crucial for code sharing and collaboration.
3. Setup Other Accounts: Please setup other useful accounts like in Slack, Postman, etc.

Crownstack's Processes and Learning Programs

We have a couple of processes and various structured learning programs that will help you getting familiar with Crownstack and its expectations. The first week is all about understanding these processes and learning programs. Please go through the following processes and learning programs we support.

Crownstack's Processes

1. The Crownstack Culture Code - creating a company company we love
2. Crownstack's Mission & Vision
3. Go through and understand Crownstack's QA Process and best practices. Please take help from your team lead to understand the QA process in detail
4. Get familiar with the process of filling in Timesheets & WSR (Weekly Status Report) - your team lead should guide you on these

Crownstack's Learning Programs

We offer a structured learning program to help you become proficient in whatever learning path you choose or yourself. Our learning programs are divided into several levels, each focusing on different aspects of upskilling in short-term and long-term.

1. #COMET Quarterly Learning Goals
2. Fast Learning Sprint (FLS)
3. Learning Budget
4. Crownstack Certification Program (#CCP)
5. #TRAP (Technical Research And Prototyping)
6. Building Thought Leadership

Week 2: Revising / Learning Git

Git is an essential tool for version control and collaboration in software development. If you're not already familiar with Git, or need a quick revision, here are some resources to help you get started:

We highly recommend you to go through this excellent book on Git: Ry's Git Tutorial. We are dividing the topics mentioned in this book into high, medium and low priority topics. You should go through the high priority topics in the first and second week, and then low priority topics can be covered whenever needed in your project.

High Priority Topics

1. Introduction
2. The Basics
3. Undoing Changes
4. Branches I
5. Branches II
6. Remotes
7. Centralized Workflows
8. Distributed Workflows
9. Tips & Tricks --> Ignore a File
10. Tips & Tricks --> Stash Uncommitted Changes
11. Tips & Tricks --> View Diffs Between Commits
12. Tips & Tricks --> Reset and Checkout Files

Low Priority (but eventually important) Topics

1. Rebasing
2. Rewriting History
3. Patch Workflows
4. Tips & Tricks
5. Plumbing

Note: We highly recommend you to don't just go through the book, but also practice the commands in your local machine. You can create a sample repository and practice the commands mentioned in the book. Learning without practicing is not going to help you much, so make sure you practice the commands and concepts thoroughly.

Week 3: Completing Git Learning and Git Evaluation

In the third week, you will complete revising Git with practice. This week is crucial for building a strong foundation in version control. Once done, please also go through the following blog articles on Git workflows and best practices we follow at Crownstack:

1. Crownstack's Git workflow & Best Practices
2. Managing github repositories - Best Practices

Git evaluation

After you have completed revising Git, we will conduct a Git evaluation to assess your understanding and proficiency. This evaluation will cover the topics you have learned and will help us identify areas where you may need further improvement.

Week 4 and 5: Basics of HTML, CSS & JavaScript & evaluation

Now that you have some good knowledge related to Git in the third week, we will now start learning/revising basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which are very important fundamentals of web applications. Specially JavaScript will help you to write UI automation code in Playwright or Cypress. Please go through HTML & CSS Full Course for Beginners and then follow this JavaScript Roadmap.

Feel free to skip topics you already know, but make sure you cover all the topics mentioned in the roadmap.

Evaluation

Upon completion of your HTML, CSS and JavaScript learning module, we will conduct an evaluation to assess your comprehension and proficiency. This assessment will encompass the topics covered and help identify any areas that may benefit from further development.

Week 6: Get familiar with TypeScript

Use Crownstack's TypeScript Learning Roadmap and this short course to get familiar with TypeScript. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that adds static types, which can help you catch errors early and improve code quality.

Week 7 and 8: Understanding Playwright Basics & TypeScript Evaluation

TypeScript Evaluation

In week 7 we will do another evaluation on TypeScript to assess your understanding and proficiency.

After that, we will start learning Playwright. Please go through the Crownstack's Playwright Basics guide to get started with Playwright. This guide will cover the basics of Playwright, including how to set up your environment, understanding Playwright's architecture and its core concepts.

Week 9 and 10: Playwright Advanced Concepts

To be added later.

Week 11 and 12: Playwright Best Practices and Playwright Evaluation

By now you must have a good understanding of Playwright and its advanced concepts. In the eleventh week, we will focus on Playwright best practices. Please go through the Crownstack's Playwright Best Practices guide to learn about the best practices for writing Playwright tests.

Also in the twelth week, we will conduct a comprehensive evaluation on Playwright to assess your understanding and proficiency in using Playwright for UI automation testing. This evaluation will cover all the topics you have learned so far and will help us identify any areas that may need further improvement.