Here our tests are written in BDD (behavior-driven development) style, mimicking user actions and data expectations. During development, these are run against m

Here our tests are written in BDD (behavior-driven development) style, mimicking user actions and data expectations. During development, these are run against mocks (either in-memory DB or a mock repository). Individual small scenarios are also combined into realistic long-running processes, for example cases from opened to closed taking various paths. The suite runs in parallel fast and frequently alongside unit tests. Then occasionally like before PR merges, the same scenarios are run against a clone of the production environment to catch any mismatch with the run-time environment, also in parallel (connections) to simulate multi-user usage. Any technical issue prompts an improvement of the mocks and rarely resurfaces. Running these as scripts also doubles as a fake data generator to play with for manual testing, reporting, etc. Last we proceed with some manual testing to validate new changes and pick-up UI-related issues - we don't do UI automation.