Technical QA Phenomenon - True Reality

I thought of writing this article to shed some light of whats happening to the technical QA phenomenon that we talk about...

In this article I would not say that all QA professionals are non-technical but there are some instances that we see that people say they are technical but truly they are not.

"I'm a technical QA professional I as I know how to automate with Selenium" - This is completely a wrong statement. We all know automation is not about learning Selenium. Selenium is just one part of the story, although Selenium is considered as the god father of test automation...There are so many other tools and frameworks that we need to learn in our journey of being a technically fluent person. There are many tools like Protractor, WinAppDriver, RestAssured, UniRest, Appium and the list goes on..and our goal is to learn most of these tools as we move up in our career ladder. More we know the tool stack the better off we are as technical test automation professionals. Some organization who are involved in multiple test project may require a person to know diverse set of test automation tools not just holding on to a single test automation tool. Who knows the customer's may have diverse applications which have different UIs or Platforms. So the success of being a true technical person is to learn, experiment, understand and know the most of the test automation tools.

"I know how to automate a manual test case and I'm a technical QA specialist" - This is also a vague statement that some people do. Test automation is not about automating any given manual test case. This is now not the demand of a automated tester. Its far beyond. The demand is now designing, developing and deploying test automation frameworks. Its about combining components and integrating, which ultimately creating a test automation framework demanded by the organization or the project. So its high time for any automation professional to create and put up a framework in your personal research and in your organization.

"I'm a technical person and there is no need for manual testing we should send manual testers out of the industry" - This was one of the hilarious statements which I stumbled upon in the industry recently. Its was said by a person who handles the QA process of an organization. The statement showed some immaturity. We all know that manual testing cannot be eliminated as we have test automation in place. Manual testing involves great value in emotional intelligence and individual behavior, which test automation tools cannot mimic. We all know exploratory testing is one of the areas which needs great effort in human testing and we cannot replace it by any test automation tool. There are some technological gaps that tools cannot still cater. So making such statements openly show there is a blind eye that person has in these areas.

"I'm a QA architect and I'm a technical champion" - This also not so in reality. Although a person is a QA architect by the designation he/she cannot be technically fluent. There are people in this industry who white label themselves in the industry as architects, but non of them don't even have the knowledge of test tools all around and even the knowledge of design and developing frameworks on demand. In practical they just wear a cap and badge saying "Hey I'm a QA architect". Most times the Senior QA engineer's knowledge is better off than test architects knowledge.

"I'm technical I need a high salary and I move to a company which pays a lot of Salary" Earning a huge salary is not always the part of the game. You may today jump to the company which is popular and where you can earn a big salary. But sometimes you will be so involved in the work of these organization as there will be also no work life balance (working late nights) and you may never invest your time in personal learning. So any organization will not always be beautiful. There will be downturn one day and when you think of a move out, you will find that though you work for a large company with huge salary, you are just nothing as the industry's demands have changed when you were occupied with high paying company...So strike a balance

"Managers and heads in QA knows everything" This is also a wrong mindset. Sometimes we see that most QA managers and heads of QA lack technical QA knowledge. I have herd and come a cross instances where managers think test automation as rocket science. They think its always Selenium, some think its just taking a test case and automating it.. Some thinks that estimation is like estimating a manual test process. In most cases QA engineers gets frustrated working such people as they don't understand anything. Another case is some heads and managers are scared to employee or work with highly technical QA engineers or professionals underneath them as it will show their technical inability or the people who are underneath them might take over them someday. This should not be the case always. Managers or heads of QA should learn from their subordinates and work together as a team. Sometimes your technical fluent people will drive your organization to the next level. Its time for even the managers to learn QA technical areas...even those who do not know to write a single test automation script.

"AI is here AI is here" I see people talking about AI in test automation. Some where T Shirts with slogans...But there is no single tool up to the standards in the industry today...Its still in clouds and people are trying to reach...Although we have RPA its not AI...It will evolve in the future.....

"I make videos...I interview people...I put whats there in a tool's website" - There are some in the industry who really want to be stars in test automation arena. I see some interview people and put it on in their websites. Its greatly informative, but if the intention is to become popular this is not the true way...Making videos and circling on three or four set of tools is not the awesome way to becoming a rock star in test automation...I see people making videos of sessions which all already there in the internet. But don't see something new or something new they give to the community from these existing tools. Like combining them and creating something new and useful. This is where we stagnate the development of QA technicality. So lets put our efforts and learn new things...Growing up community is not being a film star.

"Criticize people's efforts" - There are bunch of clowns in the community and we have to live with them. These people do not know anything on QA technicality nor they don't have anything to the community or their organization..They just comment and gives value less feedback to those who do. But rather than just commenting, its better we learn from these efforts, take the challenge and grow up.

"I create a huge technical solution and here it is guys" - I was present in a recent meetup and I saw a presentation of a person. That person even have shown it to a leading test conference in USA. But when I see that, I see there is no practicality or technical viability. So when you bring up something that is technical viable and practical in the community...otherwise its worthless to anyone.

"Wow that companies interview was so technical and I think its a technical company" This is not always the case. Companies which do so might be doing an advertising gimmick..But ones people get it its just nothing and there is little technicality or nothing used. Before jumping into conclusions ask from a friend there or look at what they really do. Sometimes the interviewers tries to show off what they do but actually in reality they don't. So its better to do some background study before you move in.

These are some of the things that we see in this so called technical QA phenomenon. This article is not intended to hit any person..but its the reality...the dark cloud we have in our industry...But we should take these points and grow...The who point is that all we write is the beautiful picture in technical test industry and no one cares to write these hidden parts...So lets look at these and grow...lets make this QA community rise and shine..