I am sure that this question often strikes every test automation professional, irrespective of their experience level and skills proficiency. So, in this blog, I am going to do a deep dive with you to share the industry experience which I have gained, and that you can easily relate with your experiences.
The rise and transformation of test automation roles:
From around year 2002, Software Testing as a profession got
significant acceleration in India. And within few years, the market demand for
Test Automation professionals risen scrumptiously. Popular testing tools of
that decade was Quick Test Pro, WinRunner, Silk Test, Rational Robot, SoapUI,
Rational integration tester and Ruby on rails. I am not covering ETL test automation
tools in this blog, as I do not have practical experience with any of those
tools.
Nevertheless, Microsoft Excel based macros and VB Scripts
were very popular those days, mostly used for some windows based repetitive
tasks automation, including manipulation of Databases. PERL and Shell Scripting
provides similar capabilities in more secured Unix/Linux/Solaris platforms.
Many training centres emerged across India, to utilise the opportunity
to upskilling a mass and make huge profits out of it. Those days, all training
centres used to conduct classroom trainings, some even offered placement assistance.
Many who could afford such trainings those days, got benefitted either by
switching to new role or by securing a new job. These days, the traditional
training centres evolved too, offering hybrid trainings (including classroom, virtual,
offline), but now they are facing direct competition from more organized Online
training platforms and free training vlogs available on the internet.
In that decade, many did certifications in QTP, WinRunner,
Silk Test and RFT tools. Whoever did the certifications earliest, mostly got benefitted.
So, what is challenging our sustainability in test automation roles?
In simple terms, the technological advances in electronics
and semiconductor industry, coupled with substantial advances in Cloud computing,
mobile platforms, AI, ML, IoT, Responsive Web, Single page/React applications,
and new generations of high-speed internet, opensource tools has been destabilising
our careers over the past decade, say 2013 to 2023.
Well, one might debate, that the technological advances have
impacted all types of job roles, and human lives. Absolutely!!! Our
lives have transformed to Digital; Quality Assurance and Test Automation are directly
responsible to maintaining and raising the quality of our Digital transformation
journey.
Between 2002 – 2012, many organizations used to conduct
trainings on test automation tools, beside other technologies, for their
employees, and it was
optional to participate. They did use to conduct some skill-based
exams, offering a certificate to their employees whoever scores 72% (for
example) or above. Since, its optional, only people whoever was serious in
building a career out of it or who want to be a future manager, were the only
participants. In that
decade, most roles demanded a manual tester, who can do automation if needed.
From 2012 onward, the optional training started becoming
mandatory, and they started featuring in the career paths, yearly learning
goals and performance appraisal discussions. From 2015 onward, many
organizations revamped the role of manual testers, by upskilling that
population to Automation
Tester roles, who can perform manual testing if required. In this
period, we mostly transformed from using Excel based test data sheets to BDD
Examples, API driven data (JSON, XML, and recently GraphQL), Configuration
based data (Properties files) etc. Many of us were tasked with doing complex test
automation's, for example Mainframe applications, PDF files, image recognition and
comparison, Big Data, running Unix batches part of integration test and reading
console logs etc.
From 2020, the automation roles now demand knowledge and
experience of CI/CD tools (GitLab’s, Jenkins, TeamCity, Terraform, Ansible,
Ant, Docker, Kubernetes, Azure/AWS), deployment, Elasticsearch backed log
server. That means, an automation
tester who can perform DevOps tasks too.
Additionally, introduction and rise of new automation tools (mentioned below) started challenging the test automation professionals who spent most of their career with UFT (QTP), RFT, Selenium (IDE, 2.0 or 3.0) and Silk Test to upskill in these tools, to sustain and stay relevant in the job market.
- Open source: Playwright, Cypress, WebdriverIO, Puppeter, Selenium Webdriver 4.0, PyTest, Robot Framework, RestAssured
- Licensed tools (Including SaaS offerings): Copado Provar, AccelQ, Tricentis TOSCA, Test Complete, Ranorex, Katalan Studio, Karate
- Test Infrastructure providers: BrowserStack, SauceLab, LamdaTest
Accompanied by the language antagonisms Java, C#, Python, JavaScript,
and TypeScript.
For hardcore techies, who are having 12+ years of
experience, there are other additional challenges to deal with in order to sustain, managing an
agile or e2e test automation team, preparing and implementing test strategies, enforcing
design patterns and architectural decisions, code reviews, mentoring, managing conflicts, test
environments, test data, test logging (Elasticsearch, New Relic), test metrics
and test reporting.
Finally, what actions would help us to sustain?
- Positive attitude and openness towards learning.
- A systematic approach, balancing our life priorities and managing at least 4 hrs a week for our personal skills development and practice, with devotion.
- Taking advantage of our organizations provided/supported learning platforms to identify, register and complete relevant training.
- Earning digital badges
- Keeping an eye on market relevant certifications, and earning those
- Getting accustomed to NLP based machine learning algorithms and trying out tools like ChatGPT
- Build skills in at least one RPA tool (UiPath, Microsoft Power Automate etc.)
- Finally, mastering JavaScript. What??? Yes, you read it right. If you master JavaScript, all these tools will become easy for you to learn: Cypress, Playwright, WebdriverJS, WebdriverIO, Test Complete and Tricentis TOSCA.
