Testing Smarter with Sudeep Chatterjee

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

Sudeep Chatterjee is a senior technology leader with 19 years’ experience with top tier Investment banks, FinTech and Consulting firms managing testing globally for enterprise-wide change programmes.

Currently Sudeep is working as Programme Test Manager/Head of Testing at Bank Of America Merrill Lynch within FICC - Global FX Technology group.

Read the full interview here: Testing Smarter with Sudeep Chatterjee

Excerpts from the Interview:

Hexawise: If you could write a letter and send it back in time to yourself when you were first getting into software testing, what advice would you include in it?

Sudeep: Coming from a technology background, I did not give enough emphasis on learning business when I started getting into software testing. The advice I would like to include in the letter back to myself is the importance of learning about business.

Hexawise: What drew you into a career in software testing?

Sudeep: I found software testing as a branch of software engineering where one needs to have the diverse interest of learning both technology and the business for which the software is built.

Software testers needs to learn the technical architecture and the underlying technology stack to work with the developers and find technical issues as well as work with business users to learn how the application will be used and find the functional issues.

Besides this in test management other skills are also required like project and programme management, stakeholder management and strong influencing skills. For software testers - learning never stops and never a dull day!

Hexawise: How would you like to see the practice of software testing evolve over the next 5 to 10 years?

Sudeep: The practice of software testing will really evolve in next 5 to 10 years with main difference being that emphasis will be given in grass roots computer science education about software testing. Not many computer science graduates currently aspire to be software testers and the primary reason being that software testing as engineering discipline is not explained to aspiring youths well.

Another big change that will evolve will be that senior management technology positions will have candidates who have been in software testing discipline rather than only having candidates from the development side. These leaders with a software testing backround will act as role models for the next generation of software testers.

As we get more CTO’s, CIO’s, Programme directors from software testing wing of the organisation rather than only development or architecture, will give more confidence for the new graduates that the software industry respect software testing as a profession and show there is sustained career growth model.

Read previous interviews: 

1. Testing Smarter with Janet Gregory
2. Testing Smarter with Santhosh Tuppad
3. Testing Smarter with Katrina Clokie
4. Testing Smarter with Angie Jones
5. Testing Smarter with Matt Heusser
6. Testing Smarter at StarEAST
7. Testing Smarter with Ajay Balamurugadas
8. Testing Smarter with Hans Buwalda
9. Testing Smarter with Rikard Edgren
10. Testing Smarter with Michael Bolton
11. Testing Smarter with Mike Bland
12. Testing Smarter with Alan Page
13. Testing Smarter with Dorothy Graham
14. Testing Smarter with James Bach