Have you ever wondered how the most interesting people in testing world started their way? Or- what were the biggest challenges they had to face?
So make yourself a cup of coffee and read a short interview with these people!
These are the 5 questions we asked:
- How did you start your way in the testing world?
- In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges & opportunities for testers today?
- Do you have any funny or interesting anecdote to share with our readers about your way in the software testing world or in general on testing?
- What is the one piece of advice you would give to any tester starting his way today?
- How do you believe the software testing world will look like in 5-10 years? What will be different and what will be the same?
5 Testing Questions with Lalit Bhamare –
The next tester we asked to interview next is Lalitkumar Bhamare.
Lalitkumar is a well known Senior Software Test Engineer at XING AG and one of the two founders and editors of – Tea-time with testers, one of the most respectful testing magazine.
His specialties are his Testing Skills and Test Management, Teaching Testing & providing testing related consultation to project teams.
These are his answers:
1. How did you start your way in the testing world?
Being a Mechanical Engineer by graduation I always wanted to work with machines, cars and so on. But in 3rd year of my engineering studies I got an offer from an IT consulting giant. I took the offer as I thought that job would help me with my plans for higher studies. And there it all started. After intensive training on programming with Java, I was asked to work as Test Automation Engineer for one of the clients.
After 6 months or so, a new testing team was being formed for a newly acquired project and my boss recommended that I should join it , set things up and lead it. There I got to work, learn and lead some of the best testers I have worked with. For my industry experience the position was big for me but I like challenges and in my attempt of becoming a better tester and leader, I came in contact with great minds like James Bach, Michael Bolton, Jerry Weinberg, Dr. Meeta Prakash (just to name a few). These all people have had a great impact on me and from there I realised that my passion lies more with testing than anything else and since then I am happily working as a software tester.
2. In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges & opportunities for testers today?
Well, I think it’s not just about today. Challenges for the testing community have been more or less similar always, but it’s just that they keep changing their nature once in a while. And then they reflect in different forms based on different contexts. For example, testers are usually at the receiving end when change drivers (like dev methodologies, technology, software, business models, tools etc.) come into play. They are usually left on their own to figure out how to fit in or fight out. This is indeed challenging but at the same time it creates big opportunities for testers. The awesome world of modern testing methodologies, skills, techniques, heuristics and some tools that we see today is the result of fighting against such all odds in my opinion.
One thing I would like to highlight though is that, with advancements like AI, VR, Machine learning, Mobile technologies, wearables etc. and advancements in tools that assist testing (automation, build pipelines, monitors and alerts etc.), testers’ abilities to ‘think beyond the box’ and skills they posses are likely to get challenged like never before. It might reach to a point where the existence and relevance of bad testers will be questioned. Since they still outnumber the modern, thinking testers it might once again lead to a discussion in industry whether “testers” are needed or not. The resultant scenario of all these conditions together is what I see as the biggest challenge (rather newest form of regular challenge) for testers today (or in near future).
It will be interesting to see what testers do to fit in or fight it out this time and what innovations the testing community gets empowered with as its outcome.
3. Do you have any funny or interesting anecdote to share with our readers about your way in the software testing world or in general on testing?
Umm, yes. I was attending Agile Testing Days conference last year and there I met a lot of cool testers I had never met before. While we were talking about testing and trying to solve some testing related problems, I recommended one tester some articles from the Tea-time with Testers magazine and shared those with her via my email id. We were talking about articles and magazine for quite some time and when we were about to call it a day, she noticed my email id and asked, “Are you the same Lalit who runs this magazine? I know you of course but could not recognise you” And then we talked for a few hours more. In the same conference, I was discussing testing with an expert I never met in person before. In the flow of discussions, I had forgotten to introduce myself so I did so towards the end of our discussion. And then she said she knew me already and admired my work.
This was the first conference I attended in Europe and was honestly not expecting many people I met for the first time to know me already. The realisation that the work you do from one corner of the world gets noticed across different parts of the world when you least expect it has been an interesting experience for me. It also tells about how awesome our testing community is. If you are contributing to it, you are most likely to get things back in unexpected ways.
4. What is the one piece of advice you would give to any tester starting his way today?
“Make Courage, Curiosity and Conviction your friends and you shall do good”.
5. How do you believe the software testing world will look like in 5-10 years? What will be different and what will be the same?
Well, I am afraid that I am not the best person to answer this. 5 years back, I had believed that ‘typical test case selling factories’ that mostly produce ‘test zombies’ would be out of business by now. But unfortunately, they still exist (may be not in as big volume as in past) . That said, I believe our testing world won’t be way too different than it is today. There will be new techniques, tools and methods to solve problems of new times but orthodox testing will continue to co-exist (for whatever reasons).
The challenges that we are facing today will probably reappear in different forms and names but the end result will be the same. Maybe, there won’t be any role or job title called “tester” as it is today but the abilities, skills and mindset it requires will become ‘bare minimum expectation’ from everyone working with softwares.
Testing won’t remain just about inspecting and advocating quality but new conditions may require one to go extra miles and create value with multidisciplinary skills.
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