31-Mar-2022
Tech Talks With Johanna South: Exploring The Depth Of Quality Engineering & QA Automation
By Parteek Goel
31-Mar-2022
By Parteek Goel
When it comes to QA Automation, the process works as an essence to Quality Engineering. From QA principles to product development practices, QA Automation holds all the potential to contribute to management, operations, development, and maintenance of the development lifecycle within an enterprise architecture.
As BugRaptors has established itself as a market leader for Quality Assurance and software testing, we believe keeping constant communication with the people from industry is the only way to create a more sustainable world of technology. With such motive in mind, this time, our in-house expert, Parteek Goyal, Automation Manager, BugRaptors, interacted with Johanna South.
With cumulative experience of more than 15 years, Johanna is working as the Associate Director of Test Automation and Performance Engineering at Humana. She is a highly enthusiastic IT leader with proven expertise in enhancing and maintaining systems. Over the years, Johanna has been working on diverse technology and business-oriented projects while her innovative spirit has always stayed to be an important factor in creating successful and impactful solutions.
From team development and leadership to resource management, risk assessment, quality management, change management, and vendor relations, Johanna understands every aspect of project management and process improvement.
Nevertheless, the interview between Parteek Goyal and Johanna involved everything from her career journey to Quality Engineering and QA Automation services. More importantly, Johanna shared her heart out talking about the future of QA Automation as a part of progressive development.
Without taking much of your time, let us quickly dive into the interview taking insights into Johanna’s expertise and point of view.
Parteek: Who influenced you to get into the testing field?
Johanna: My start in QA came about in a lucky way. I was working my way through college at a call center. When I graduated with a Business Degree, I applied for a QA role in that same company. I figured out why not! I already knew the applications well and I had some limited technical background through previous schooling. The leader of that department saw curiosity in me, coupled with my in-depth knowledge of the applications they were building and testing, and took a chance on me! I haven’t looked back since.
Parteek: What is a common myth about your job or field of expertise?
Johanna: I think the common myth that drives me crazy is that testing is easy. Anyone that excels at testing understands the vast breadth of knowledge you must know how to find the good bugs. Sure, anyone can click their way through an application and find simple bugs, but it takes a unique mindset and understanding to find those bugs that are hard to reproduce and drive customers to the competitor. Testers must have a good balance of business and technical. Sharing qualities from both areas allows us to think like an end-user and at the same time, understand how things work!
Parteek: Where do you self-educate?
Johanna: I will often use social media to stay connected to testing peers and the latest testing concepts. LinkedIn has several great people/orgs to follow: Ministry of Testing (Simon Tomes), Agile Testing Alliance, Test Automation University, Joe Colantonio (performance testing), Angie Joes (test automation). In addition, I follow several bloggers that can be found on the Ministry of Testing’s blog feed.
Parteek: How does Quality Engineering go beyond traditional notions of Quality Assurance?
Johanna: Quality Engineering, to me, goes beyond just the development lifecycle. Ensuring things like testable architecture and requirements plays into the engineering piece. Whereas, Quality Assurance is really the defined focus within QE.
Parteek: What does the future hold for QA automation?
Johanna: Automation is driving solutions that are more easily adopted and implemented outside of traditional engineers. Low-code and No-code solutions are allowing “automation” to be achieved where it wasn’t before. Technology, from what I can tell, has greatly increased in value and is somewhat meeting the needs of users.
I expect this trend to continue. In addition, organizations are adapting and pushing test automation across multiple different roles on a team. Organizations are shifting to specific automation engineers on teams to encourage automation by everyone on the team. This trend keeps automation more in line with development and ensures proper testing and coverage.
Parteek: Are you planning to write any book on automation testing?
Johanna: Currently, no. There are so many great reads out there!
Parteek: If anybody wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Johanna: You can find me on LinkedIn (Johanna South), Twitter (@theQAconnection) or visit my website (theQAconnection.com)
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Parteek Goel
Parteek Goel is a highly-dynamic QA expert with proficiency in automation, AI, and ML technologies. Currently, working as an automation manager at BugRaptors, he has a knack for creating software technology with excellence. Parteek loves to explore new places for leisure, but you'll find him creating technology exceeding specified standards or client requirements most of the time.
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BugRaptors is one of the best software testing companies headquartered in India and the US, which is committed to catering to the diverse QA needs of any business. We are one of the fastest-growing QA companies; striving to deliver technology-oriented QA services, worldwide. BugRaptors is a team of 200+ ISTQB-certified testers, along with ISO 9001:2018 and ISO 27001 certifications.
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