What’s Our Job When the Machines Do Testing?
Members of the engineering community are beginning to explore the exciting capabilities of artificial intelligence in order to remove even more mundane and manual tasks from our jobs. The next generation of automation within the software development lifecycle comes to us in the form of AI-inspired approaches: analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing. Geoff Meyer refers to this as cognitive automation, and it offers the promise of automating tasks that up until now could only be performed by humans. However, engineering practitioners going down the path of cognitive automation should proceed with caution due to the combination of excessive hype and unprecedented complexities compared to prior stages of automation. Join Geoff as he provides a framework for organizations to use when considering the application of AI to tasks within their SDLC. The framework, developed while leading the DellEMC Test AI initiatives, provides engineering teams with a means of countering the optimistic—and sometimes unrealistic—expectations of their leaders and subject matter experts with a pragmatic yet goal-oriented approach.
Geoff Meyer is a test architect in the Dell EMC Infrastructure Solutions Group and has thirty-five years of industry experience as a software developer, manager, program manager, and director. He drives the test strategy and architecture for over four hundred software and hardware testers across India, Taiwan, and the United States, which includes initiatives for agile testing, test automation, continuous testing, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), analytics, and machine learning. Geoff is a member of the Agile Austin community and frequent speaker at international agile and testing conferences. He is a board member of the Veterans4Quality.org 501(c)(3) and is a mentor and instructor to veterans participating in the program, which provides them an on-ramp to a career in software quality assurance. You can connect with Geoff on LinkedIn or Twitter.