Interview of Srideep Mitra, Marketing & Partner Consultant at TestPlant Ltd

Srideep Mitra, Marketing & Partner Consultant at TestPlant Ltd. Quality Testing interviewed him to discuss about the TestPlant Tools.

We hope that this interview will be useful for you.

QT. Can you tell us brief introduction about yourself?
SM: Srideep is presently with TestPlant (www.testplant.com) the pioneering company behind the QA automation tool eggPlant. He is the digital marketing consultant at the company with the primary focus of establishing a two way communication between TestPlant and the QA community across the globe.

Prior to TestPlant, he was with AppLabs world largest independent testing services company involved in mining, qualifying and suggesting QA solutions to enterprise and BFSI clients in UK and Ireland.

For the last 4 years his key responsibility and drive was to make the ISV and enterprise community aware why software testing cannot take a backstage.

Presently he is working and collaborating with the QA community to make them aware why QA automation will become the core of testing frameworks.

QT: Why the need of Automation Testing does come?
SM: This recession has made IT investment more TCO driven and testing is untouched. Whether you are a start-up, an established ISV, IT Service provider for an enterprise you want your testing function to become more agile and contribute in compressing the SDLC. Automation Testing is one area that can significantly contribute to compress this time scales. Automation testing tools will become an increasingly a fixed variable in QA frameworks. This down turn will test innovation to its limits and automation testing tools can be the new mantra of optimizing testing KPI’s. A recent survey by TestPlant suggest customers today are more aware about test automation and are asking vendors what is the percentage of test automation in the QA implementation mix. The good news is that QA community is very quickly adopting test automation as a best practice and that is providing a new learning curve to the test engineers.

QT: As a Test Engineer, What are the scripting languages should learn?
SM: A scripting language will depend on what tool you are using. But I think as a base learning to create shell scripts on the controller system (mac or linux) can be handy for automation projects.

QT: What all to be automated what not to be?
SM: All that test processes which are repeatable, scalable and requires skills beyond human limitations (Pixel comparison). Anything that doesn’t have screen or display needn’t be automated.

QT: How to do tool evaluation and what are the factors for it?
SM: Tool evaluation depends in what context you want to deploy it. But some basic parameters can be

• Whether this tool fits my QA framework, or I have to mould it to use
• Whether my system under test will not intruded by the tool or disarray the functionality.
• What’s the scope of the tool to work in different OS, and technology environments?
• How easy is it to use the tool by the team irrespective of test automation experience?

QT: Tell us brief about eggPlant and how it will be useful for a Test Engineer?
SM:About eggPlant: "eggPlant" is the world's leading UAT centric QA automation tool. eggPlant uses intelligent image recognition technology and “sees” the GUI as the human eye does. It is completely non-invasive. eggPlant is technology agnostic and uniquely it can test multimedia applications, multiple OS, Mobile applications.

Usefulness to the Testing community: eggPlant does testing from users perspective, that helps the QA engineers concentrate on the output rather than doing trial and error efforts while using a code based tool. It’s easy to use and learn, which gives the QA engineer a quick learning curve to move into automation testing vertical. Its non-invasive and works using a VNC server, so using it in remote based client applications is easy and keeps the clients confidence intact.

QT: Is there any scripting language is required for eggPlant tool?
SM: Yes, there is scripting language for eggPlant called Sensetalk, which is very easy and quick to learn.

QT: What characteristics and practices make for a good tester?
SM:

• He should be persistent and should always try to bring some Out of the box thinking in the process
• Use best tool for the job
• Is not dependent on a single point of failure

QT: Do you see the quality of resources in the software testing field increasing (or) decreasing in the world?
SM: Today there is more emphasis on testing, which increases the responsibility of the QA community . That makes it very important that adopting a correct testing framework with proper tool is very critical for continuous improvement of testing. But most of the time due to lack of awareness the QA community don't think outside the box and would just go with the legacy tools without doing proper tests on its functionality. Which is changing very quickly as the community become more aware about specific tools.

QT: Any message to Quality Testing (QT) Members?
SM: Share the knowledge and you will gain more

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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