How to be a test automation tycoon
Kushan Shalindra Amarasiri
Director Quality Engineering at Social Catfish
We are in an era test automation has grown rapidly and is at a stage of climax. Most of the software development and delivery organizations are now utilizing test automation in their testing process. There are vast amount of test automation tools available, catering diverse platforms of software delivery. Test automation tools are built to cater web, web services, mobility and even desktop applications. They can be free and open source or commercial. Most important are the tools which helps to automate the web services and micro services. Test automation alone wont survive in the industry. There should be proper test automation frameworks. Having a proper test automation framework ensure the life of the test automation practice.
With these modern changes happening around the test automation arena, people try to adapt to test automation by enhancing their test automation development skills. Some tries to be specialist or tycoons of test automation while some just learns a single automation tool like Selenium for survival. This article is catered for all as we all should try to enhance our skills on test automation and climb up the test automation and technology tool stack for growth and meet industrial demands.
Being a test automation tycoon is not that easy. There are many areas that we should consider.
- Learn and climb up the test automation & technology tool stack - To be an expert on test automation, you have to know the test automation tools available in the industry. Learning one or two tools will never take you there. Tools comes and goes, you should be skilled enough to adapt and learn these tools and be vigilant to know what are the best outcome that should be taken from each tool.
- Research, forward thinking and being out of the box - To be an awesome test professional you have to start doing research and continue until you are in this sector. Research is utmost important as we should discover new tools, its potential and what can we do to enhance it more. We should be innovative and out of the box thinking. This ensures a person to look at one step ahead and to look at more on integrations with other tools and frameworks.
- Be a speaker not a listener - To be a tycoon on test automation you have to be a speaker. You have to know what you are speaking and well versed on the test automation arena. You should not be just a listener. As a professional in test automation you should be interacting with the audience and give practical expert advice on the tools and technologies available according to the nature of the problem.
- Help the community and needy, don't keep it to your self - When you are an expert in test automation, initiate helping the needed in the test community. Educate the community with your knowledge and experience. This values a lot and it creates an image of you in the community. Just keeping it to your self, will never make you a tycoon. Others should recognize the efforts that you take to bring up the society. Let it be non-financial help, cause it matters a lot.
- Be updated with the happening in the test automation arena - You have to read articles on test automation, go through new technology demos and videos. You have to communicate with other industrial experts. Just staying silent will never take you in this journey.
- Know the integration points - When you are an expert in test automation you should be knowledgeable enough to know the integration points in any test automation framework. How to extend the test automation framework and the tool capability by integrating with other third party tools and libraries at the API level.
- Contribute your knowledge in terms of Tech Talks, Conference speeches, articles, know how videos which helps others to know what you are capable of and also to support their learning curve. These materials should facilitate others knowledge to expand.
- You are the maestro and you should be able to give a effective solution to the problem within couple of hours to the test department, team mate or a friend in need. You should be able to illustrate it in a way understood by others. You should be able to use the existing technological components as building blocks and built the solution.
Trust me. A test automation tycoon cannot be created within days or months. It takes lot of hard work, determination, motivation, experience and self drive. Some people in the industry are so poor that they think they are test automation tycoons just because they do tutorials, videos and articles about test automation concepts and selenium. These are just staled people in the industry who takes test automation as a hip hop gimmick. I even had a person in LinkedIn who had several videos in his YouTube channel about test automation and manual test practices. He even had a post saying that one can be a test automation expert by just knowing basic test automation framework types. This is a misjudgment in the industry.
So to be a test automation tycoon one has to move far ahead than traditional thinking. One should decide differently and not be a follower of others.
Director at Logical Line Marking
7 年I really enjoyed your view on how to be a test automation tycoon, I'll keep an eye out for more of your posts!
Test automation trainer | Independent consultant | Workshop facilitator | Helping teams take the next step in test automation
7 年Hey Kushan, while you make some good points in this article (especially when it comes to sharing your knowledge) I cannot help but think you’re falling in the same trap as a lot of other professionals in the field by relentlessly focusing on tools. Sure, a good test automation engineer should be well versed in a number of tools and should be aware of the range of tools that are out there. What’s far too often forgotten in test automation, though, is that applying any given tool is only the very last step in the overall implementation process. Far more important yet constantly overlooked by people moving into or working in the field are skills like expectation management (what is test automation going to do for us?), seeing automation as the support act it is in the overall performance of software development (what problem are we trying to solve in the first place?) and deciding what NOT to automate (avoiding the ‘if all you got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’ trap). No matter how proficient you are with a tool, if you don’t have the skills to face the above challenges I highly doubt that you’ll ever be a master of the craft. There’s too much focus on tools in our field. It's time to change that.