STARWEST 2020 Concurrent Session : Building Automation Engineers From Scratch

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Thursday, October 8, 2020 - 3:45pm to 4:45pm

Building Automation Engineers From Scratch

Creating automation engineers from manual testers is hard. Even if your testers are willing, they have a lot of hurdles to get over to feel like the same kind of subject matter experts in automation as they are in manual testing. As a career-long manual tester making the leap to automation, Jenny Bramble has the experience to explain frustrations and provide solutions. She will discuss managing the expectations of your testers and their managers (what's the time frame? Why isn't this working?), techniques for teaching (such as games! Pair/mob programming! Software fundamentals!), and how to know when your testers have made it (what should manual testers be aiming for when they start?). You'll walk away from the talk feeling empowered to create a plan to build your automation engineers from scratch! You’ll walk away from this talk with a powerful new set of tools in your toolbox: The basic framework your manual testers need to be successful—including how to determine where the gaps in knowledge are and filling them, Advice on managing the expectations of your testers and management from time constraints to what success looks like, Several methods for teaching framed around a case study of a team that built itself up from the inside out and is running a successful automation suite, and Facing and overcoming other challenges such as ability and perceived ability, resources, time, tooling, and how to get your team excited for a new chapter in their professional development.

Jenny-Bramble
WillowTree Apps

Jenny Bramble came up through support and DevOps, cutting her teeth on that interesting role that acts as the 'translator' between customer requests from support and the development team before diving headlong into her career as a tester. Her love of support and the human side of problems lets her find a sweet spot between empathy for the user and empathy for her team. She's done testing, support, or human interfacing for most of her career. She finds herself happiest when she's making an impact on other people--whether it's helping find issues in applications, speaking at events, or just grabbing coffee and chatting.