Testing Strategy — Notes

Speed targets

• Unit suite: < 30 s on local laptop.
• Component suite: < 2 min.
• Integration suite (per service): < 5 min.
• E2E smoke: < 10 min.

Flake budget

• Aim for < 0.1% flake rate.
• Quarantine flaky tests; either fix in 1 week or delete.

Test data

• Each test seeds its own fixtures; never depend on global state.
• Use builders or factories (UserBuilder.aUser().withEmail(...)).
• Teardown via transaction rollback (faster than DELETE).

CI strategy

• Pyramid bottom on every PR.
• Pyramid top on merge to main + nightly.
• Performance + chaos on a schedule, not per-PR.

Refs

• Test-Driven Development by Example — Kent Beck.
• xUnit Test Patterns — Gerard Meszaros.
• Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests — Freeman & Pryce.
• Martin Fowler: "Test Pyramid", "Test Doubles" articles.
• Pact docs (pact.io).