Interview of Ashwin Palaparthi, Founder of Testers Desk & ValueMinds

1. Tell us brief about yourself?

I am Founder of ValueMinds. I started career in 1992 (when I was 13 years old), spent 7 years in running a local courier/logistics business in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India; and then entered IT. Self taught programming and served as an IT trainer for 3 years. Served as a technical architect at Zeneb for a brief period to build a J2EE product. it then spent 5 years at AppLabs, both in US and India , handling technology solutions and presales in Software Testing. Managed several complex testing projects while at AppLabs and architected customized test harnesses for its clientele. Left AppLabs while serving as an AVP/Principal Architect to found ValueMinds. I live TestersDesk.com at ValueMinds and also consult/train on special areas in Software Testing like Advanced Tools in Testing and Security Testing.

I am deeply passionate about Product Innovation, Test Engineering, Software Architecture, Teaching and Music (both listening and composing; for example my recent album Nuvvo kala in telugu is a reflection of that!).

Off late I started blogging at - http://apalaparthi.blogspot.com

2. How did you get the idea to develop your own product (TestersDesk)?

I have found several problems in the way how testers perform test design and test data generation activities and then started to write a book. In the mid-way of writing the book, I thought why not I convert into a product. The result is the last two years of effort that has produced a web-based toolkit called TestersDesk.com.

3. Tell us briefly about TestersDesk(TD) and how it will be useful for a Test Engineer?

TestersDesk.com is a web-based toolkit that provides:

• Software Functionality Test Design tools
  
• Test Data Generation tools
  
• and a few other miscellaneous tools

Functional Benefits to testers:

• Test Case Optimization – The number of test cases can be reduced using Pairwise TestCase Generator and T-way TestCase Generator.
  
• Test Case Visualization – Decision tables can be seen for a group of test conditions, test cases can be re-ordered, subsets of test items can be selected from larger sets.
  
• Real-like Test Data Generation – Real person names, luhn numbers for credit cards, valid email ids etc can be generated.
  
• Data File Generation – Files based on a template or based on size/type requirements can be generated.
  
• System Information Collection – Scripts to collect information from the Test Machine like the list of running processes, installed hardware/software etc.

Technical Benefits to testers:

• Accessible anywhere – Since this is a hosted solution with browser as the interface, test engineers can quickly access from anywhere/anytime
  
• Multi-language support – Inputs can be in any language and the output produced will have the same language characters
  
• Repeatable history – Previous requests can be re-submitted to obtain identical results
  
• Standards-based – No proprietary formats used for inputs or outputs and the CSV/XML outputs can be easily consumed in both manual testing and data-driving the automated tests
  
• Rich Internet Application with contemporary UI using AJAX (testers can use it for a prolonged time)

4. Tell us about the awards that TestersDesk (TD) has won?

Won “Best Innovation of the Year” award from HYSEA (certified by Ernst and Young), “Testing Thought Leadership” award, and is among the “Top 30” Indian Hottest Startups (chosen by TATA NEN)

5. Is there any contribution members of QT can do to TestersDesk?

Sure. Basically then can invest time in exploring the toolkit and then figure out how they can extract value from it. They can always write to me at ap@testersdesk.com with their questions, suggestions, new tool requests or whatever. They can blog about the product usage and their experiences.

6. General Question – What do you think is the future of Software testing?

Today, there is a lot of “non testing time” in what we test. That is going to be eliminated through innovative tools and techniques.

We will see more focus on test automation right from the beginning of the SDLC, call is Test Driven Development or whatever.

Artificial intelligence will be applied in testing effort as well.

Unification of testing types- black box testers get same visibility into the operations as that of white box testers.

And more…

7. Any message to QT members

Personal message:

Well, we have to extend the traditional meaning of test automation and continuously figure out how we can use new tools, methods etc to increase test productivity. We do testing to find issues that can hurt the product operations and the users. We are the most responsible citizens of the IT value spectrum. Therefore, our brains and hearts need to perform the most essential and meaningful activities. We have to avoid the non-testing time in testing. The other aspect is having increased self-respect about our profession of test engineering. More self respect will mean more happiness and more output!

Product message:

Register at TestersDesk.com and share it with your friends.

Please read - Discover 20 ways to use TestersDesk.com - http://www.testersdesk.com/20ways_testersdesk.html

If you have time, please view the videos at - https://www.testersdesk.com/testersdesk_videos.html

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Dear Members,

We wish him all the best in his efforts to take TestersDesk to the world as an Indian innovation. Find TestersDesk discussions here.

-QT Moderator