Testing Smarter with Hans Buwalda

This interview with Hans Buwalda is part of the Hexawise “Testing Smarter with…” software testing interview series. Our goal with these interviews is to highlight insights and experiences as told by many of the software testing field’s leading thinkers.

Hans has gained experience as a developer, manager, and principal consultant for companies and organizations worldwide. His approaches to testing—action-based testing and soap opera testing—have helped a variety of customers achieve scalable and maintainable solutions for large and complex testing challenges.

Read the full interview here: Testing Smarter with Hans Buwalda

Excerpts from the interview:

Hexawise: You were an early pioneer and key contributor to the keyword-driven test automation framework which has stood the test of time and is widely adopted in the industry. What drove you and other early keyword-driven framework pioneers to create it and advocate for its broader adoption?

Hans: I believe the two main drivers for using keywords are readability for non-technical people, and long-term maintainability of the tests. I think my core message is not as much the keywords themselves, but more the importance of test design in achieving those goals. Without a good modularized organization of tests keywords will fail, and so will for example Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). To say it even stronger: the worst automation projects I have seen were keyword projects.

Hexawise: I see that you’ll be presenting at the StarEast conference in May. What could you share with us about those topics? What gave you the idea to talk about them?

Hans: I'm doing two tutorials, one on Better Test Design for Great Test Automation. The other focuses on what makes automated testing scalable. The classes are based on real-world experiences from various projects I’ve done, across many industries. With the many recent developments like cloud and DevOps, automation is constantly evolving, so it is fun to discuss about them.

Hexawise: Large companies often discount the importance of software testing. What advice do you have for software testers to help their organizations understand the importance of expecting more from the software testing efforts in the organization?

Hans: You have to be serious about your craft. Know testing techniques, engineering principles and the domain of an application you're testing. Your attitude is important too. Be aggressive to the system under test, but cooperative as member of a team. Second, always keep an eye on the business side.

You should not be testing because you have read somewhere that testing is important. Testing costs time and money and there must be business reasons to invest in it. Not testing saves money, but also introduces risks that can cost money later on. Saving money and losing money are business considerations that well managed large companies tend to take very seriously.

You, or your QA management, must be ready to explain the value of their testing, and automation.

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Read the full interview here: Testing Smarter with Hans Buwalda

Read previous interviews: 

1. Testing Smarter with Rikard Edgren
2. Testing Smarter with Michael Bolton
3. Testing Smarter with Mike Bland
4. Testing Smarter with Alan Page
5. Testing Smarter with Dorothy Graham
6. Testing Smarter with James Bach