Should I delete flaky tests?

Delete only after confirming the underlying signal is duplicated elsewhere. Otherwise quarantine, fix, and reintroduce.

What's an acceptable flakiness rate?

Top SDET teams target < 0.5%. Above 2% destroys trust in the suite.

Glossary

Flaky Test — What It Is & The 7-Step Fix

A flaky test is one that produces different results on the same code without intentional changes. Flaky tests destroy trust in your automation suite faster than missing coverage does.

Last updated: June 1970

Top causes of flakiness

Implicit waits / race conditions
Shared test data / order dependence
Network and time-based assertions
Animations and CSS transitions
Resource exhaustion in CI

How to fix them

Quarantine the test, add observability (HAR + video), reproduce locally with retries=0, fix the root cause (not the symptom), then re-add to the main suite with a stability gate.

Frequently asked questions

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