The Tester’s Role - Balancing Technical Acumen and User Advocacy

Melissa Tondi discusses the changing landscape of the role of testers, the challenges of hiring, and a way to shift the pendulum back to balance technical acumen with a user advocacy role. Melissa leads a thoughtful discussion on what makes a good tester, how test leaders can continue to promote our profession, and how to accentuate the value testers bring to organizations. She identifies factors that caused the test/QA role to become mainstream and how it shifted to become more technically focused. Melissa helps fill in the gaps with a test strategy that incorporates a solid automation strategy which allows for balance between supporting the development efforts while equally emphasizing user advocacy tests. She will identify areas that have traditionally created overhead and inefficiency - like matrixed team members, automation strategies, and regression testing.  Present recommendations on how to make those areas more efficient and lean. Also, she take a deep-dive on test automation success and defines who is affected by automation. Where automation belongs in the SDLC and when it should start​. She will also Identify the pitfalls that impact successful automation​, and give you specific recommendations on how to address these pitfalls​.