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Series

Pester for Beginners

25 parts in reading order. Each builds on the one before it — start at Part 1, or jump to any section.

  1. IntroAnnouncing "Pester for Beginners" — the whole 25-part series, all at once3 min · June 22, 2026

Foundations: Why & First Steps

  1. Part 1What Is Pester, and Why Test PowerShell at All?6 min · March 3, 2026
  2. Part 2Installing Pester (and Untangling v3/4 vs v5)5 min · March 7, 2026
  3. Part 3Your First Test: Describe, It, and Should5 min · March 10, 2026
  4. Part 4Running Tests with Invoke-Pester and Reading the Output6 min · March 16, 2026

Assertions: Making Tests Mean Something

  1. Part 5The Should Command and Core Operators5 min · March 21, 2026
  2. Part 6Comparing Numbers, Strings, and Collections5 min · March 23, 2026
  3. Part 7Testing That Things Fail: Should -Throw6 min · March 30, 2026
  4. Part 8Saying "Not": Negating Assertions Cleanly5 min · April 3, 2026

Structure: Organizing a Test Suite

  1. Part 9Describe vs Context vs It: Organizing Intent6 min · April 6, 2026
  2. Part 10Setup & Teardown: BeforeAll, AfterAll, BeforeEach, AfterEach6 min · April 11, 2026
  3. Part 11Arrange–Act–Assert and Naming Tests People Can Read6 min · April 17, 2026
  4. Part 12File Layout: .Tests.ps1, Folders, and Naming Conventions5 min · April 20, 2026

Testing Real Code

  1. Part 13Getting Your Function Under Test (Dot-Sourcing vs Modules)5 min · April 24, 2026
  2. Part 14Safe File and Registry Tests with TestDrive and TestRegistry5 min · May 1, 2026
  3. Part 15Data-Driven Tests with -ForEach and -TestCases6 min · May 3, 2026
  4. Part 16Tagging and Filtering Which Tests Run6 min · May 8, 2026

Mocking & Isolation

  1. Part 17What Mocking Is and When You Actually Need It6 min · May 12, 2026
  2. Part 18Mock Basics: Replacing a Command's Behavior6 min · May 18, 2026
  3. Part 19Proving Interactions with Should -Invoke6 min · May 21, 2026
  4. Part 20Targeted Mocks with -ParameterFilter6 min · May 26, 2026
  5. Part 21Mocking Pitfalls: Scope, InModuleScope, and Over-Mocking6 min · May 30, 2026

Quality & Automation

  1. Part 22Measuring Code Coverage with Pester6 min · June 5, 2026
  2. Part 23Configuring Pester with New-PesterConfiguration6 min · June 8, 2026
  3. Part 24Running Pester in CI/CD (GitHub Actions & Azure Pipelines)6 min · June 13, 2026
  4. Part 25Putting It Together: A TDD Workflow + Common Pitfalls (Capstone)7 min · June 17, 2026