abhivaikar/howtheytest

A collection of public resources about how software companies test their software

Summary

"howtheytest" is a curated index of public resources showing how different software companies approach testing and quality engineering. The collection aggregates blog posts, articles, and conference videos, with entries for organizations such as Airbnb, Amazon, Apple, Atlassian, Bumble, Canva, and ASOS. It is structured as a browsable list rather than a runnable tool.

What it is useful for

The project functions as a reference library for engineers who want to study how real teams design their testing practices. Topics covered include functional testing, test automation, CI/CD, release management, quality culture, chaos engineering, observability, and UX/user testing. For example, the Amazon section links to videos on "Chaos Engineering on AWS" and "Large Scale Load Testing Amazon.com's Traffic on AWS," while the Bumble section includes posts like "White-box testing with Appium Espresso Driver" and "Catching bugs on the client-side." Engineers can find patterns for specific contexts: mobile UI testing (Capital One's "Robot Pattern Testing for XCUITest"), service-oriented pipelines (Airbnb's "Building an effective test pipeline in a service oriented architecture"), contract testing (Atlassian's "Verifying Microservice Integrations with Contract Testing"), and BDD (ASOS's "Behaviour driven automation testing in .NET Core using BDTest"). It is useful when designing a new test strategy, comparing tools such as Cypress, Playwright, Pact, or Jepsen, or benchmarking your team's maturity against published engineering practice.

How engineers can use it

A documented limitation: the repository's README states it is no longer actively maintained and explicitly directs readers to the project website at https://abhivaikar.github.io/howtheytest/, which provides up-to-date listings, search, filtering by industry and topic, and a contribution form. To use the project, engineers should open the website, browse or filter by company or topic, and follow the embedded links to each company's engineering blog or video. Specific resources can be opened directly, such as Canva's "Speeding up UI tests with CodeceptJS and Playwright" or Appian's "Chaos Testing a Distributed System with Jepsen." The repository is a content index, not a package, so no build or install commands are documented; engineers wanting to add a resource should use the contribution form on the website rather than opening a pull request against the deprecated README.