One of the most common release blockers is a test that needs maintenance before it will pass. While most test maintenance is relatively simple and happens immediately when the suite runs, there are times when a test will need a more comprehensive update. When this happens, the affected tests are disabled and placed in “maintenance” mode.

You can help reduce the amount of time any part of your test suite is disabled for maintenance by communicating upcoming changes with your QA lead, and by instituting code quality policies with your developers:

• Tell your QA Lead about major changes you’re working on If the changes are going to impact more than a handful of pages and significantly affect the DOM we can usually do the necessary maintenance ahead of time and keep the whole test suite running. When in doubt, just shoot us a message!

• Use test IDs whenever possible One of the most frequent causes of test failures (changing selectors) can be avoided by using a test ID that doesn’t change when making minor UI adjustments.