Led End-to-End Test Migration to Playwright
Transforming WooCommerce Blocks Testing Infrastructure
Spearheaded the transition from flaky Puppeteer tests to reliable Playwright E2E testing for WooCommerce Blocks, improving stability and developer experience while unblocking critical CI/CD integration issues.
PlaywrightPuppeteerE2E TestingTypeScriptGitHub ActionsCI/CD
Modernizing E2E testing infrastructure for better reliability
Resolving Critical Test Infrastructure Challenges
The existing End-to-End (E2E) test suite for WooCommerce Blocks, built using Puppeteer, suffered from significant issues. Tests were notoriously flaky, frequently failing intermittently, which eroded team confidence in their reliability. Debugging these failures was complex and time-consuming, hindering developer productivity. Furthermore, Puppeteer's element selectors were less intuitive compared to modern alternatives, and with an upcoming repository merge with WooCommerce core (which already used Playwright), aligning our testing tools became strategically important.
My Role & Contributions
Recognizing the challenges and potential benefits, I proactively researched Playwright during an initiative week. When the official migration project started, I volunteered to lead the effort.
- Project Leadership: Overseeing the entire migration process, managing tasks, providing weekly reports to the team lead, and ensuring blockers were addressed promptly
- Technical Direction: Evaluating Playwright, defining the migration strategy, and tackling complex technical hurdles
- Hands-on Implementation: Contributing directly to the migration by writing and reviewing Playwright tests
- Mentorship: Coaching teammates unfamiliar with Playwright, including pair programming sessions to build their confidence and skills
- Proactive Issue Identification: Being the first to identify and report critical E2E test failures in the CI environment immediately following the repository merge into WooCommerce core
- Cross-functional Collaboration: Working closely with teammates, QA engineers, and the WooCommerce DevOps team to resolve integration challenges
Key Contributions & Technical Challenges
Technical Implementation Details
The migration from Puppeteer to Playwright required deep technical understanding of both frameworks and careful implementation to ensure a smooth transition:
✨ Highlights
- Led complete migration of E2E test suite from Puppeteer to Playwright
- Reduced test flakiness by over 80% through framework migration
- Unblocked critical CI/CD integration post-repository merge
🔍 Challenges
- Converting complex authentication flows from Puppeteer to Playwright paradigms
- Debugging CI failures in an unfamiliar WooCommerce core environment
- Maintaining test stability during the incremental migration process
🛠️ Skills Demonstrated
- Playwright: Deep expertise in modern E2E testing framework
- Test Architecture: Designing scalable and maintainable test suites
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions configuration and debugging
Leadership & Technical Growth
- Gained expertise in leading large-scale technical migrations with minimal disruption
- Developed deep understanding of modern E2E testing best practices and patterns
- Learned to navigate complex CI/CD environments and debug integration issues
- Improved skills in cross-functional collaboration, especially with DevOps teams
- Mastered Playwright's advanced features including contexts, storage states, and debugging tools
- Enhanced ability to mentor and upskill team members on new technologies
Technologies & Tools
⚙️ Core Stack
- Playwright
- TypeScript
- JavaScript (ES6+)
- Node.js
- GitHub Actions
📦 Libraries
- Playwright (E2E Testing Framework)
- Jest (for comparison)
- Puppeteer (legacy system)
- WooCommerce Blocks (testing context)
- WordPress Core (environment)
🔧 Tools
- Playwright Inspector
- Playwright Trace Viewer
- GitHub Actions CI/CD