AMA: Decoding the Future of QA and SDET Roles in the Tech-Driven World [Testμ 2023]

In recent times, Quality Assurance (QA) and Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) have undergone a massive transformation with the introduction of AI, Machine Learning, and Cloud Computing. As the digital landscape becomes more complex, the roles of QA engineers and SDETs are evolving to keep up with the changes. They face multiple challenges, including transitioning from manual to automated testing, keeping up with the trends, skill upgradation, and choosing the right career path.

In this session, our speaker, Babu Narayanan Manickam, has deep-dived into these challenges and shared his insights on reshaping your career amidst these emerging technologies and excelling as a QA or an SDET.

About the Speaker

With an experience of more than 25 years, Babu Manickam started his career as a skilled developer, then transitioned into a Master Quality Engineer. His journey includes creating over 50,000 test scripts using diverse tools and frameworks. Further, he has mentored over 50,000 persons across 30+ countries on test automation and performance engineering.

Currently, as the CEO of Testleaf and Qeagle, Babu continues to drive innovation and excellence in the QA and SDET sectors.

If you couldn’t catch all the sessions live, don’t worry! You can access the recordings at your convenience by visiting the LambdaTest YouTube Channel.

Overview of the AMA Session

Hosted by Joe Colantonio, This 30-minute AMA (Ask me Anything) session with Babu Manickam explored the ongoing transformation in the QA and the automation landscape. Some key questions asked during the AMA session included AI’s growing role in QA, the impact of automation on testing practices, the rise of cloud-native applications, and strategies to overcome testing challenges.

Impact of AI and Machine Learning on QA and Testing

Joe kicked off the AMA session with an audience poll on the impact of AI and ML on the QA domain in the next five years. While most of the audience seemed confident that AI would play a huge role in enhancing the existing testing processes, almost 13% seemed convinced that AI would replace the human workforce. Babu Manickam busted this myth, ensured that AI can only elevate the testing landscape with a collaborative approach, and highlighted the significance of tool augmentation.

Further, he emphasized the importance of human creativity, intuition, and critical thinking in identifying the issues that AI might overlook.

Choosing the Right AI/ML Tool

When someone from the audience asked about it, Babu asked the audience to think about the specific situation. It’s not just about automating tasks related to how things look on the screen (UI). He believes that focusing too much on testing the appearance of things isn’t always the best approach.

With a lot of experience, he recommended being careful about doing too much testing that looks at the user interface. They didn’t agree with a strict rule that said you always have to do a ton of this testing.

Instead of just telling you to use a specific tool or technology, he strongly thinks you should figure out exactly what you want to automate. Do you want to automate creating tests? Do you want to check how things look visually? You can then find the right tool for the job, depending on what you need.

Starting the SDET Journey the Right Way

Babu Manickam discussed assisting individuals in moving from testing to development jobs. He stated that many talented people work in testing rather than development. He said individuals who were into testing and coding may become architects. Beginning with data structures and algorithms, he suggested a six-step approach for becoming an architect before moving on to design patterns and non-functional elements. He pushed for skill development through time and a willingness to learn from mistakes.

Further, Babu advised learning about cloud platforms like AWS or Azure and their offerings before switching to cloud-native testing. He suggested determining the services that are utilized and modifying testing strategies accordingly.

Mastering the Right QA/SDET Skill Set

As the session proceeded, Babu was asked What are the essential skills QAs and SDETs focus to keep pace with AI advancements?

To keep up with the AI advancements, Babu recommends QA and SDET professionals start learning a programming language and then gradually advance to backend automation and DevOps, Cloud Computing, and Machine Learning.

To make the learning process easier, Babu further suggested looking for online courses from MIT and Microsoft. He believes while having a basic understanding of Selenium and Java is a good start, knowing Playwright could be an added advantage. Lastly, he suggests building a strong foundation step-by-step and learning new technologies like microservices or architectural elements as and when they emerge.

Essential Skills for Career Advancement

Among the audience, the next question asked was: How could anyone enhance skills in this ever-evolving tech landscape while their primary skills are Selenium and Java?

Although Babu Manickam feels that Selenium and Java indicate a strong foundation, relying on just one language is never a safe option. Today, many tools are moving towards using JavaScript. He recommended using Playwright for automation tasks and asked everyone to explore backend automation to understand microservices and architecture better.

Future of Selenium

While answering the concern, will Selenium be present in the future as certain issues are going on with the Chrome browser? Babu explains that troubles with the Chrome Browser are not a big problem.

Babu strongly believes that Chrome’s changes will be adapted to, and there will be solutions for testing in future releases. While he encourages the audience to keep using selenium, he suggests exploring alternatives like Playwright for testing.

A Systematic Approach to Handle Flaky Tests with AI

As the session proceeded, Babu faced an interesting question- “Can organizations depend on AI for self-healing or fixing flaky tests, and how can they decipher between an actual product failure versus not a real failure?”

Babu strongly believes that flaky tests largely happen because of 3 reasons — the tool itself, because of the developer, and lastly, because the coder writes the wrong code. To handle flaky tests, one solution is self-healing by locator, while the other is to re-duplicate your tests. He talked about an interesting approach he adopts- whenever his Selenium test fails, he re-runs it with the Playwright to validate if the engine is causing the trouble.

Babu Manickam strongly believes that there are 3 reasons for flaky tests-tool not handling it right, application being flaky, you as a coder don’t write your codes well. That’s not all! Join this session to listen to his thoughts pic.twitter.com/w2hcRsYWtp
— LambdaTest (@lambdatesting) August 22, 2023

While concluding the session, Babu answered another common question- How to learn the basics of QA?

He emphasized key attributes of the QA mindset, whether for seasoned testers or professionals transitioning into QA roles. This includes a commitment to creative problem-solving, a user-centric perspective, and effective communication within a cross-functional team. While coding could be the easiest task here, developing the right mindset is challenging.

He further highlighted that learning a language like Python is the easiest way to get started with QA. For an automation engineer, it could be JavaScript and data structures. He stressed the significance of continuous learning and adapting to evolving technologies in QA. He shares his journey, including using AI to convert Selenium code, highlighting the need to remain adaptable in the ever-changing QA landscape. He views tools like ChatGPT as privileges that make tasks like generating test cases or test data more convenient.

The AMA session with Babu Manickam was an insightful learning session for the audience. Although AI continuously evolves, Babu’s session and insights prove that it cannot replace the power of human creativity and its intuitive nature that helps it evolve every day. AI can only enhance the existing software development and testing processes.

This AMA didn’t cover your questions? Drop them on LambdaTest Community.