Interview of Gil Novak, Automation Architect

Gil Novak is an Automation Architect working in the Boston area. Quality Testing interviewed him recently, to discuss about the Importance of Automation.

We hope that this interview will be useful for you.

QT: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and what you do?
GN: I started my career writing test code for operating system (VMS) library routines and computer language (DEC C) run time libraries. I've done test development for API and SDK products, and also for web services products. Most recently in my career, I've done testing infrastructure creation using continuous integration servers (CruiseControl.Net, Bamboo, TeamCity, and Hudson). I've often done some work with release engineering and build scripts on integration build boxes, as well as automated installations of build artifacts onto virtual machines, followed by automated smoke tests of those installations.

QT: How does your day start and how does your day end? What all do you do in a day that corresponding to testing?
GN: In the earlier part of my career, it was all about creating test cases and executing them. Lately it's more about getting all the pieces for an infrastructure in place and integrated together to become a smoothly running process, that then enables other testers to add tests to the infrastructure.

QT: What are the most common performance related mistakes that you have seen in the projects (java applications)?
GN: Performance coding is more about tuning and refactoring designs. You can start off with a design that is meant to achieve a certain measure of throughput or latency, and you can test in "production-like" environments and achieve a performance goal, but until you actually roll it out to production, you won't be able to predict all the factors that will impact performance. The best thing to do is to instrument your code up front to report timing measurements in the application log files. After that, when you find bottlenecks, you will modify the test environment to reproduce that bottleneck, and then go through some more tuning cycles with dev and qa.

QT: As a Test Engineer, What are the scripting languages should learn?
GN: First, the basics: bash and DOS batch. When you are comfortable manipulating files and strings, move on to whatever the latest and greatest scripting languages there are. These days it's python, although perl is still quite popular.

QT: What is your advice to people who want to learn automated testing tools on their own?
GN: Find tutorials online and work through the examples. Keep your copy of the examples organized so you can go back to them later for reference. Try modifying them to answer your own questions like, "what happens if I change this code that way?"

QT: What is your favorite Functional, Performance, Test Management and Security Open Source Automation Tools and Why?
GN: Early in my career, I used the home-grown tools produced at the companies I worked at. At Digital Equipment Corp, they used DTM (DEC Test Manager). Later, I created my own tools in C, C++, and bash. I've tried TETware in the past, and it was useful. Lately though, the *unit frameworks (JUnit, NUnit, HTTPunit, etc.) are what I used predominantly. For performance testing, I've used JMeter. For Test Management, I've designed a TCMS in 1998. In 2003, I hired a qa engineer who created one using PHP & MySQL. I've used HP Quality Center, which was ok, and I've also used TestLink which was awful. I also use Selenium extensively, both version 1 and the most recent alpha versions of version 2, which has Google's WebDriver integrated into it.

QT: What things should a novice tester do to enhance his/her automation testing skills for a better growth in the career?
GN: Get a computer science degree. The more you understand about how the software is built, the more of a white box tester you'll be.

QT: Is there any particular certification that you recommend?
GN: QA certifications are still of unknown value in the industry. Don't waste your time learning things to pass somebody's test. College courses would hold more weight.

QT: What’s the difference between a good tester and a great tester?
GN: Qualifying a great tester would be done by who? The tester's manager. There are various "missions" that test managers have. The mission might be to get as many manually tests executed as possible, or it might be to find as many bugs as possible, or maybe to have as thorough of a test design as possible, so that subsequent work produced the most functional coverage possible. Make your manager's mission a success, and you become a great tester.

QT: Any message to Quality Testing (QT) Members?
GN: I'd recommend this book: "Lessons Learned in Software Testing," by C. Kaner, J. Bach, and B. Pettichord (2001). Are you a software tester? Is that your career of choice? Don't just do qa because you're not smart enough to be a developer. One way to make more money is to do things that nobody else wants to do. Developers don't want to do qa work. But as long as they are pressured to pump out complex code on tight deadlines, there will be mistakes and bugs to be found. Understand that, and help the team make the software better before release.
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Dear QT Members,

We wish him all the very best in professional and personal life.

Thanks & Regards,
Kiran Kumar | Founder | Quality Testing
www.qualitytesting.info
Email: kiran@qualitytesting.info
Twitter: www.twitter.com/chkirankumar