Welcome to the inaugural episode of Automation Explanation, an Agile Thought Podcast, where you will learn about quality through automated testing and its place in modern software development.  

This week, your hosts, Antwan Maddox and Greg Burdick are starting this series of shows to discuss some of the challenges and areas of improvement related to quality engineering. Today, they are diving deep into the history and role of Quality Engineers, their place in Development Teams, and how they fit into Agile.

Key Takeaways

• A brief history of test automation.
• • Test automation has existed for more than two decades.
  • At the beginning of automation, users reached a point where the time to do automation outweighed the benefits. There were also some environmental issues, where some development environments were incompatible when running Scripts.
  • The next generation of automation tools replaced the previous generation.
• What is a quality engineer? What are their responsibilities?
• • The acceptance of Agile methodology has played a role in changing the role of a tester.
  • A Quality Engineer is someone with a strong foundation in manual testing and test framework development
• Are clients looking for quality engineers?
• • There is a big need for Quality Engineers currently in the market even though there is always going to be a need for a manual tester.
  • Modern DevOps plays a big factor, emphasizing continuous innovation and delivery, leading to more frequent integration of code and deployments to the production environment.
• What should a Quality Engineer focus on learning more about DevOps or Agile?
• • First, a Quality Engineer has to learn a programming language.
  • Second, he needs to learn how to automate the front end.
  • Third, a Quality Engineer needs to have more intimate knowledge of the back end.
  • Stage four is about DevOps automation, and every Quality Engineer should know about it.
• How do Quality Engineers fit in Agile?
• • Quality Engineers fit into the Development Team very intimately and they are part of the cycle from the beginning to the end.
  • Quality engineers are key to creating testable and automatable software.
  • They need to know about the application roadmap.
  • Quality engineers have to be included in the software development process. Everyone should be involved in automation. 
  • The organization needs to be ready for automation.
  • To deliver an application is not just delivering a bunch of features, it is also delivering a testable and automatable code, quality is a must when delivering software.
• What is Quality Engineering about?
• • Quality Engineering is not about velocity or defects, it is about how software is put together and organized for the development effort.
  • A Quality engineer assures that there will be a low stress and anxiety deployment.
  • A Quality Engineer is constantly growing and learning.
  • Quality engineers should be hired in pairs.

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