Presenting at UKSTAR

UKSTAR is a software testing conference run by the EuroSTAR team in London. They started this conference a couple of years ago and I remember submitting a panel topic which got rejected.

Last year, in between jobs, I came up with another idea of a talk which I submitted to UKSTAR. And I got accepted!

ECSTATIC!!!

The conference was held in London over 2 days in March’19.

There were a multitude of discussions around the value of testing and the reasons for testing which were discussed in the conference.

The topic I submitted was: ‘We are a Part of the Team Too’

We are a Part of The Team Too

Having been in the software testing industry for 13 years now, I feel the Quality Engineers and SDETs are slowly losing their value and their place in the team. Since I moved into test leadership, I have become more aware of the issues which stop us from bringing the value system.

In my talk, I talk about the 3 main challenges we face in test leadership:

1. Hiring: Bad CVs and unmatched salaries form the basis of this argument. The CVs hardly reflect what problems were solved by the individual. Rather, they end up listing all the languages and frameworks without talking about their real application. Another issue is that the salaries of testers don’t match the developers in the industry. This is why a lot of people leave the role and join other sections of the software engineering industry.
2. Setting Objectives: SDETs should be responsible for overall quality and not just testing their products. Often, SDETs are given objectives which restrict them to testing the product only and not think about overall picture of efficient product delivery.
3. Testers within team: As managers, we also have this constant debate about team ratios. How many testers in the team are enough? What should the balance be? We have created mini-waterfalls inside of our sprints which has eventually started reflecting badly on the testers even though releases are a whole team responsibility.

The whole experience of speaking at UKSTAR was really interesting and thought-provoking. I got a multitude of questions around what I think about hiring and how team make ups should be. I also managed to increase my network which will help me in turn to combat some of the challenges I face in my career.