Give each parallel test its own stock and customer records
The suite passes alone but fails in parallel because every worker buys the same seeded SKU. Namespace mutable fixtures and make cleanup safe when a worker crashes.
- Focused work estimate
- 2h 30m + prerequisites
- Priority in the scenario
- High
- Engineering practice
- Test isolation · Data lifecycle · Parallel testing
Estimated field mix
- Quality engineering80%
- Database engineering20%
Field percentages are editorial estimates of the ticket's engineering focus. They total 100%; they are not measured time, proficiency scores, or ownership evidence.
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Project context
A small commerce team has happy-path browser tests but still ships rounding and retry defects. Model a fictional shop using synthetic products, a local payment double, and explicit cart rules before adding regression coverage.
Setup prerequisites
- Create or provide a local checkout fixture application.
- Model products, tax rules, inventory, and a payment-provider double using synthetic data.
Preceding work
Complete these dependencies, or supply their agreed outputs before taking this ticket.
- CHECK-101 · Write the smallest cart fixture that catches a pricing regression
- CHECK-102 · Replace timing sleeps in the checkout happy path
- CHECK-104 · Prove a lost payment response cannot create two orders
- CHECK-105 · Test the last-item race without relying on lucky timing
- CHECK-106 · Check that one customer cannot open another receipt
Acceptance criteria
- Each test run receives unique customer, cart, inventory, and provider namespaces.
- Cleanup deletes only records owned by that run and can be repeated safely.
- A crashed run is discoverable by expiry metadata without clearing records from active runs.
Implementation constraints
- Use a controllable clock for expiry checks.
- Avoid global truncate operations.
Verification to include
- Run two full suites concurrently and verify their record IDs never overlap.
- Crash one run, expire it, and confirm cleanup preserves the other run and unowned sentinel data.
Deliverables
- Fixture lifecycle helpers and parallel-isolation tests
Rollout and recovery
Migrate tests to namespaced seeds before increasing CI concurrency; disable expired-run cleanup if ownership metadata is missing.
Value of the work
For the engineer: Practice risk-based test selection, stable browser automation, and diagnosis of intermittent failures.
For the team: Review whether a test suite catches business regressions and explains failures without creating noisy release gates.
Evidence boundaries
Outcome Evidence: Tests, patches, and runbooks are requested deliverables. They become Outcome Evidence only through a qualified Mission and immutable Evidence IDs.
Ownership Evidence: Independent adaptation must be observed under a declared verification policy and cite immutable Evidence IDs. Completing a planning ticket establishes no Ownership Evidence.