Tech Talks With Lewis Prescott

Every industry, right from retail to media is quickly moving towards their digital goals with rapid adoption of enterprise solutions, software, and user-dedicated applications. However, the extensive competition has even pushed the industry to recognize the need for quality assurance services.  

Moreover, it has become more crucial than ever to focus on quality considering the extensive inclination of people towards technology. And since this understanding of users is not restricted to functionality or performance, it becomes even more important for every brand aiming on digital goals to deliver the perfect user experience.  

Nevertheless, harnessing the true potential of quality assurance and software testing goals require the right knowledge and approach to the development lifecycle. Doing so could not only aid developers to align their products with the business goals but even create technology that is sustainable and productive.  

Since developing such understanding require access to the right knowledge, driving such insights require effective networking and connection building amongst business analysts, developers, and testers.  

Sticking to the thought and taking our tech talks series forward, this time, our in-house expert and VP, Delivery and Operations, Kanika Vatsyayan, had an interview with Lewis Prescott, a QA expert from United Kingdom. Lewis is presently working as a full time, QA Lead at Cera with an industry experience of more than 10 years.  

Lewis has experience working on dynamic test projects, including electronic trading platforms, property management solutions, government projects, and e-procurement, covering the areas of functional, automation, and performance testing.  

He holds some amazing expertise on tech stack like C#, .Net Core, React, AWS, and more. He has also been an author for Udemy course that introduces to Contract Testing. More importantly, understanding her Corporate Social Responsibility, he actively volunteers with local community for giving coding classes to young minds. Besides, he defines his specialties as consulting on testing solutions, agile testing, and software engineer in test.  

With all those insights into Lewis’s Career and knowledge stack, let us quickly jump on the interview learning his vision and perspective towards test automation.  

Kanika: Can you share more about your background and how you got started?  

Lewis: I graduated from university with a psychology degree. However, I was lucky enough to get into testing on a graduate scheme which supported people without computer science degrees into tech. This academy taught me the foundations of software testing and development. Through my experience as a Test Analyst with TheTestPeople (now Ten10), I worked as a tester, automation tester and performance tester. 

Kanika: What was a turning point in your life?  

Lewis: Turning point in my life was joining Zava a healthcare startup which supported my passion for working in a cross functional team. They helped me grow my technical skills by pairing with developers and picking user stories for development. A few individuals taught me the basics of writing quality code and development best practices.  

Kanika: What is the best way to increase the visibility of your test automation?  

Lewis: Integrating test automation into the DevOps pipelines as quality checks or gates. Making these checks triggered and required on pull request and merge makes automation everyone's responsibility.  

Kanika: Can you talk about the challenges that you’ve had to address to identify the right testing tool.  

Lewis: Sometimes people choose tools because it's a tool they know and have used before. Another example with best intentions is to adopt BDD frameworks to simplify the readability of automation tests. Both are valid choices however this can require workarounds to fit with the tool or, in the case of BDD, abstractions for the sake of it. Complexity in your automation tools increases maintenance time and reduces ease of change.  

Kanika: Do you have a mentor? If so, who is it?  

Lewis: Had a few mentors in my career, I've been lucky enough to have great managers who have become mentors. Firstly Stephen Honeyford, who took a risk on me in the performance test project he was managing. Secondly Neil Syrett, who is my go-to person for advice in terms of testing and QA leadership.  

Kanika: If you weren’t doing what you are now, what industry would you like to be in? 

Lewis: After graduating from university, I was going to do a masters in occupational psychology. I wanted to work in Psychometric testing before I discovered software testing. I'm still very interested in personalities and how those influences behaviors.  

Kanika: Where do you self-educate? 

Lewis: I'm in the middle of about 5 books at a time. Always looking to learn skills which will help me progress in my career. Attending conferences is also a great place to meet passionate people and share knowledge. 

Kanika: Is there any way to connect with you?  

Lewis: Reach out to me via my website at pactman.co.uk, on LinkedIn or Twitter @wuigprescott 

 

At BugRaptors, we constantly work to redefine the digital landscape with access to industry expertise and knowledge that can aid testers, developers, and QA enthusiasts.     

Just in case you have any queries related to Quality Assurance Solutions or software testing services, feel free to reach our team through info@bugraptors.com