Welcome to Hit Subscribe’s Monthly Digest! In this edition, we’re excited to share a collection of recent blog posts we’ve written for our clients. Plus, stick around till the end—we’ve included a meme of the month to keep things fun!
What Is the Future of Manual Testing? A Complete Explanation
Just last week, I was talking to a friend of mine who is a QA engineer. Like a lot of folks who feel the recent advent of AI will cause a major upheaval in their lives, she is worried too. A huge aspect of her work is manual testing, and she has concerns around how quickly she can ramp up to absorb all the new information.
Her concerns seem valid. Any news article today will give you a stat on how the adoption of automation is on the rise. If you happen to scroll around on any social media platform, you’ll see countless posts along similar lines.
This is exactly why I want to take a stab at answering what the future of manual testing looks like. Together, we’ll go on this journey of understanding what manual testing entails and the big question—is it dead?
How Agentic AI Improves QA and Testing: A Practical Guide
Generative AI has already changed how we work in software testing. If you’re, for example, a QA engineer, you probably already use AI in one or more phases of the software testing lifecycle to, say, automate test case generation or execution. But it could get even better.
With agentic AI, you can incorporate automation across all testing phases to accelerate and simplify your work. What you need to do is to integrate an AI agent into the CI/CD pipeline to enable testing across the entire testing lifecycle. In this post, you learn what AI agents are and how they fit into QA and testing workflows.
How to Use AI With Your Playwright Tests: A Complete Guide
I’ve often wondered what a perfect world in software would look like—and the closest version might be having every product flow tested end to end.
Playwright, backed by Microsoft, has been a game changer here. You can write tests once and run them across all major browsers and mobile platforms. It integrates seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines, runs in Docker, and keeps tests consistent across environments.
With features like Codegen, debugging tools, and growing AI support, Playwright’s capabilities have only expanded. Its early popularity means many LLMs are already trained on Playwright code, making AI-powered test generation easier than ever.
In this article, we’ll explore how to combine the strengths of AI and Playwright to build smarter, more powerful end-to-end tests. Ready to dive in?
Understanding Quality Management in Software Development
In the symphony of software development, quality isn’t just another instrument–it’s the conductor. Quality ensures that every part of your development process hits the right notes, from design to deployment. But quality doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of a well-tuned system known as quality management.
This post will walk you through what quality management is, why it matters, and how it can fine-tune your software development life cycle.
What Is Back-End Testing? A Detailed Overview
Web apps, meant to be used by people—in contrast to APIs—usually consist of at least two major parts: the frontend and the backend, both of which have their own challenges and need to be tested. This post is all about backend testing.
As you read this guide, you’ll learn what backend testing is, why it’s important, how it differs from other types of testing, and more.
AI in Software Quality Assurance: How to Get Started
Software is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and QA teams face immense pressure to ensure applications are defect-free while keeping up with rapid development cycles. Traditional QA methods work, but they struggle to match today’s pace—especially in the age of AI in quality assurance.
Fortunately, the same AI capabilities that accelerate software creation can also streamline QA. In this guide, we’ll explore how AI in quality assurance is transforming the field, including how it can integrate into existing QA processes, the benefits it brings, and the challenges it presents.
13 Top AI-Powered Testing Tools
In recent years, advancements in AI and modern application development have changed the way QA teams ensure software quality. Traditional methods of manual or automated testing are still key to nailing testing for teams both big and small alike, but they may be outdated, inadequate, or just inefficient.
A number of modern testing tools have emerged recently that are powered by AI and possess the ability to significantly improve the accuracy and speed of the testing process. In this post, we’ll learn what these AI testing tools are and how exactly they can improve the testing process.
Role Testing: Ensuring Proper Permissions in Software
In the software world, nothing sparks panic like a user with too much access. Imagine a receptionist accidentally wiping a production database because they were granted admin rights. That’s not just embarrassing–it’s catastrophic. That’s why role testing exists: to make sure users have the right permissions, no more, no less. Like giving every actor a script that only shows their lines, role testing ensures the right people have the right level of access in your digital universe.
Let’s dig into what role testing really is, how to do it right, and how it can save your security down the road.
Installation Testing: Definition, Types, and Best Practices
Installing software shouldn’t feel like assembling furniture without instructions–maddening, error-prone, and likely to leave you with leftover parts. If you have ever had the responsibility of carrying out large-scale distribution, you might have experienced the struggle of poor distribution planning or installation issues. And if you are in charge of a system or application with a large user base, you know how important it is to provide as close to a flawless experience as possible. That’s where installation testing comes in.
In this post, you’ll learn what installation testing is, why it’s essential, the types you should know about, and how to carry it out right. We’ll also cover benefits, common hurdles, and some best practices to follow. Whether you’re a QA engineer or just a curious product manager, this guide will give you the foundation to test your installations with confidence.
Integration Tests vs. End-to-End Tests: How Do They Relate?
Most developers think software development is all about building and deploying applications, but there’s more to it. One important aspect that’s often overlooked is testing. In fact, testing is just as important as building the application itself.
Software testing gives you confidence that your application will perform well after deployment. It ensures your app works as expected and meets all the requirements and standards. There are different types of testing in software development, but in this article, we’ll focus on integration testing and end-to-end testing.
We’ll explore the relationship and differences between integration tests and end-to-end tests, including when to use each.
12 Useful Software Testing Best Practices
Testing is basically about making sure your software is reliable, mostly by finding issues before it’s shipped to users. There are unit tests for checking individual components in isolation, integration tests for making sure every part works well together, performance tests for seeing how well the system works under load, and security tests to identify vulnerabilities before attackers do. All these together make your test strategy work.
Following testing best practices makes life easier, so you can catch bugs early, fix them fast, and avoid those “oh no” moments before release. Plus, it keeps the team on the same page and ensures everyone is confident in what is shipped.
What You Need to Know About Acceptance Criteria
AI is driving rapid change in software, with development cycles shrinking from years to weeks. Low-code and no-code platforms like n8n and Make.com are making software accessible to non-technical users, fueling the industry’s growth to an expected $125.45 billion by 2030.
With more people building software, requirements often shift, making clarity critical. As Charles R. Martin notes, “Requirements change. Every software engineering project will face this hard problem.”
Acceptance criteria help combat this ambiguity, aligning teams and ensuring software meets expectations. In this post, we’ll cover what acceptance criteria are, why they matter, and best practices for writing them.
Testing in Production: What It Is and How to Do It
Whenever I mention testing in production, I get that panicked look, like I’ve suggested skipping tests entirely. But the truth is, we’re already doing it. Your monitoring dashboards, those three a.m. alerts, even that support ticket about a weird bug—in a way, all are accidental tests in production. The issue isn’t testing in production; it’s doing it unintentionally and without safeguards.
Despite investing heavily in staging environments, we can never replicate real user behaviors, data volumes, or unexpected edge cases. I realized this while reading The DevOps Handbook. Facebook tests with internal users first, then beta testers, and then slowly rolls out changes globally. It’s controlled, measured, and actually reduces risk.
Testing in production isn’t reckless; it’s strategic validation in real-world conditions. In this post, I’ll explain what production means, how to implement it safely, and why it might be the key to delivering reliable software at scale.
What Is Third-Party Risk Management? A Complete Guide
Organizations today rarely operate in isolation. From cloud providers and SaaS platforms to contractors and supply chain vendors, businesses depend on third parties for efficiency.
While this ecosystem drives innovation and lowers costs, it also expands attack surfaces, complicates compliance, and creates dependencies.
This is where third-party risk management (TPRM) comes in, helping organizations identify, assess, and control vendor risks so a partner’s problem doesn’t become your problem.
In this guide, you’ll learn what TPRM is, why it matters, its lifecycle, common risks, and best practices. We’ll also cover how Spin.ai can help you get started with third-party risk management.
Are Password Managers Safe? Everything You Need to Know
With so many accounts needing unique passwords, password managers help keep things simple and secure. They can create, store, and fill in strong passwords for you on any device.
But with more news about data breaches and risky updates, many people are asking whether password managers are truly safe.
This concern is understandable. If someone hacks a password manager, all of your accounts could be at risk. Most trusted password managers use strong encryption and zero-knowledge systems, but their safety still depends on how they manage encryption, permissions, and updates.
To help you understand password manager safety, this article explains how password managers work, their main benefits and risks, and how to assess their security using Spin.AI’s Application Risk Assessment Tool.
How to Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry: A Guide
Adam Robinson knows how to attract and engage an audience.
As the founder and CEO of Retention.com and RB2B, Robinson has made a name for himself by building a startup in public and taking his audience along for the ride.
Leveraging a strategy that includes LinkedIn, podcast appearances, YouTube, and newsletters, he has boosted not only his personal profile but his business bonafides — showcasing the power of thought leadership in action.
Want to learn how to become a thought leader like Adam in your industry? Read on to find out.
What is Founder-Led Marketing? A Getting Started Guide
Way back in May 2006, Gary Vaynerchuk released the first episode of WineLibraryTV, a YouTube series that sought to demystify wine and make it more accessible.
By putting himself front and center as the voice of the brand, Vaynerchuk went from a local wine shop owner to a world-famous entrepreneurial influencer.
Today, his approach is known as founder-led marketing … and it’s having a moment, with entrepreneurs across industries using their own words, ideas, and social posts as the cornerstone of their marketing efforts.
Here’s how you can tap into the power of founder-led marketing to take your business to the next level.
Executive Positioning: What It Is & Why It Matters
Can the executive positioning and image of a leader be used strategically by a company to drive business results?
If you’re Starbucks, the answer is definitely yes.
In the wake of the pandemic, Starbucks stock had fallen more than 20% in three months. Bringing legendary leader Howard Schultz back in as CEO was a masterclass in executive positioning—a move that sent a clear message to the market: the company was getting serious about revamping its culture and reimagining its future from the top down.
The Role of Thought Leadership in PR (And Why It Matters)
In 2020, the COVID pandemic hit global hotel chain Marriott especially hard. But they had a secret weapon in their PR arsenal: the role of thought leadership.
Arne Sorenson, then-CEO of the global hotel chain, leaned heavily into the role of thought leadership by sitting down for media interviews, posting thought leadership content on LinkedIn, and speaking at virtual conferences.
Through these engagements, Sorenson demonstrated the role of thought leadership in generating positive press for Marriott—showing how a CEO’s strategic voice can directly boost PR results.
Meme Of The Month
Straight from our internal Slack channel—because memes are fun, and so are we.
That’s All, Folks!
Thanks for catching up with us and we’ll see you next month. In the meantime, feel free to reach out if you have any questions, want to share your thoughts, or want to talk shop!
