Tools should are a prerequisite for efficient and effective QA

Posted on 15 April 2013 by Ewald Roodenrijs

We now live in a world where testing and quality are becoming more and more important. Last month I had a meeting with senior management in my company and I made the statement that “quality is user experience”, in other words “without the right amount of quality the user experience will always be low”. And I think most people in QA and Testing will agree with me on that. Even organizations agree on that. Then, but why do we still see so much failures in software around us? Why do we still create software without the needed quality.

For one, because it’s not possible to test for 100%! A known issue in QA, but that’s not the answer we’re looking for. I think the answer is that we still rely too much on old-fashioned manual (functional) testing. As I explained in an earlier blog we need to go past that, move forward. Testing is part of IT and needs to showcase itself as a highly versatile profession. We need to be bale to save money, deliver higher quality, shorten time to market, and go-live with as less bugs as possible…

How can we do that? There are multiple ways to answer that, but one thing will always be one of the answers: test automation or industrialization. Tools should be a prerequisite for efficient and effective QA. It should not be a question to use them, but why not to use them.

The need for test automation has never been as high as now with Agile approaches within the software development lifecycle. New generation test tools are easy to use, low cost, or both. Examples I favor are the new Tricentis TOSCA™ Testsuite, Worksoft Sertify^©, SOASTA^® Platform, but also open source tool Selenium. And QA, and IT as a whole, needs to go further. Not only use tools to automate test execution, performance testing, security testing, but even more on test specification.

The upcoming Modelization of IT enables the usage of tools even further. We can create models and specify test cases with them (with the use of special tools), create requirements, create code or more. IT can benefit by this Modelization to help the business go further and achieve its goals. I’ve written about a good example of this in this blog on fully automated testing.

The tools are the prerequisite, but how can you learn more about them. Well if you are in the Netherlands in the end of June you could go to the Test Automation Day. They just published their program on their site to enable you to learn more about test automation.

Why I joined Cognizant

Posted on 1 March 2013 by Ewald Roodenrijs

A lot of times people asked me why I left Sogeti. It’s not that I left Sogeti, it’s that I joined Cognizant! It was not the first time I was in contact with them before I decided to join. But this time it was the right time to take action.

Why? Because they gave me an interesting challenge. Because they are one of the biggest IT companies in the world. Because they still are growing in this current market (please take a look here). Because they act like a startup in Europe. Because I know a lot of very good people join Cognizant. Because I needed a newchallenge. And because they offered me a good reason to join them. All one by one good reasons to join them.

And that’s the reason. All these things together made the package they gave me the one I needed to take. And that’s why I left Sogeti.

I’m looking forward to my new job, colleagues and innovations. And I hope it’ll bring me as much satisfaction as the one I had at Sogeti…

Goodbye Sogeti

Posted on 28 February 2013 by Ewald Roodenrijs

I read this quote a few days ago “Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?”. It’s from an unknown source, but true. Why do I mention this? Well, today is the last I work for Sogeti.

On November 1, 2004 I entered Sogeti and had the idea that it was a great company where I would work as a consultant for 3-4 years and go to work somewhere else. Things changed…

After 3 years I started my interest with innovations in testing and in early 2008 I joined Solution & Innovation. The rest is history… I helped write books and articles, did presentations around the globe and saw many new places.

I’ve had some successes, greatest one was winning the Sogeti/Capgemini Innovation Award Testing in 2011. And with some of you I crossed some heads and even made you mad because I wanted to do it different.

I’m leaving Sogeti because of another challenge at another company, but also with regret for leaving such a great company. Sogeti has become part of my DNA because of all the great people working here.

People have asked me what I’ll miss most when I leave and that has always been an easy answer: the people working at Sogeti. But as I am leaving I want to thank some people specifically. Unfortunately I will be forgetting people, so my apologies for that.

Aad Schouten and Onno Agten, for giving me the option to join Sogeti. Leo van der Aalst, Rob Baarda and Marc Valkier (@marcvalkier), for granting me the honor to join the Business Development team at Sogeti. Jean-Marc Gaultier and Alfonso López de Arenosa, for helping me go far places with their IBM Alliance. Nijs Blokland (@NijsBlokland), for trusting me to do the things I did with Testing Clouds and PointZERO. Marco van den Brink, Hans Kapteijns, and Rik Marselis (@rikmarselis), for their support and coaching these last few months. Bart Vrenegoor (@bartvrenegoor), (again Alfonso), and Magdelijn Emaus (@magdelijn) for their support and friendship. And last to Therese Sinter (@misssogeti), to do my own personal branding and push me to post this blog.

I wish you all and Sogeti the best and I hope to see you all again and whoever knows, maybe “I’ll be back”.

It have been a great 8 years. Thank you all for that!!!!