Change in Technology and its impacts on Manual Testing:
The trend of IT is fast changing and technologies are emerging day by day in rapid phase, it's a general rule that if the trend is changing and if we need to survive in the IT, we should change and evolve along with market trend. "Go with the flow" as they say it but the most difficult thing for an employee is adapting to the change and learning new technology as it come either due to personal reason or for most of them its their current organization and project work culture, tight schedule which stops their evolution as an individual resource..
Now there seems threat to many of our career if you are just a plain "Java Developer" or a "Java Script Developer" or "VB Developer" or "Manual Tester" or "PHP/CSS Developer" or even for a plain
"Project Lead/Test Lead/Team Lead/Manger" etc.. Now industry looks for a "Full Stack Developer", which means an employee can not only code front end but also for middle-ware, back-end which includes skills of Data Base design; can do build & deployment and has the ability to test and automate in a Continues Integration environment. In simple a resource should be multi talented in terms of technology he know and the skills he posses. An employee's career with a single skill or knows single technology/tool can be in greater disaster than those who have many skill set.
Today the most common buzz words are Big Data; Data Analytics; Machine Learning; Automation; IOT-Internet Of Things; Artificial Intelligence; Dev-Ops; Natural Language Processing; Automatic Programming; Robotics; Continuous Integration; Efficient Algorithms; Pattern Recognition; Voice Processing; Signal Processing; Speech Synthesis; Data Protection & Security; Networking and Telecommunication etc.. are we all up to this?! May not be "Yes" by 60-75% of people.. isn't it?
Programming languages/Tools are evolving, same language is progressing with newer versions with added features, so are we evolving either by learning newer versions of same language/tool or at least scaling our self with new language/tool?! May not be "Yes" by 60-70% of people.. isn't it?
It's not only a "Manual Tester/Testing" which has the threat but even other roles/position in IT too has threat as discussed before.. But why did I stressed on "Manual Testing"?! "Strange?!" No don't be.. I let you know why this has a greater threat when compared to other positions in IT.. At-least 35-40% of IT people are lazy to learn new things either they are not willing or they can't but somehow they are surviving till date in the organization, just see your own projects or organization structure is such that they hire moderate talent people for moderate price in order to get billing, especially in service based companies.. If so, think as a manual tester what skills you have, "Special Skill", I meant? is that a difficult skill to gain mastery? 'Yes', its special only to limited extent, like understanding the domain better than others but there is no much difficulty for other resources either in learning the tool you use or software that you runs or the process you follow or to get trained on the domain and testing aspects, just surfing the net and studying online materials can make non-testing person to crack manual testing job interview in some of the organizations.
Consider current situation, if you attend manual testing interview you can find nearly 20-40 people on an avg. facing the interview with you, just an appox. estimation. Also most of the service based company or even product based company doesn't like to pay too much for single resource instead they are showing more interest to buy couple or more fresh/non-experienced resource in the place of one moderately experienced resource who costs more. This applies even to development and design and other roles too.. Consider as we quoted before 35-40% lazy resource in each sector/role/domain/technology are facing threat for their role in future as they can't learn more advanced technology, but for their current skill of design/development if they get trained on lower complex and comparatively easy skills like manual testing process/configuration management, knowing domain, some specific tools then they will be "appearing" more skilled than a manual tester with 7-8 years experience. Low skilled Designer/Coder migrating to Automation Designer stream can be seen in coming days.
Now the same job interview which you were facing with 20-40 people will slowly become 100-150 people by adding fresh/lower experienced resources who are willing to be taken-up by firm, plus say at-least 20% people who trained out of 35-40%(people from lazy sector) who were lower skilled in development/design and moving to testing. Adding to this huge number of people coming for single job opening the interview will be made tougher by adding complex puzzles, tricky coding competition or asking frame work design patterns or asking some basics of programming or skills of configuration management; leadership & domain knowledge. So, even on having a good IT experience and a sound knowledge in domain may not yield you a job as you are competing with more people who poses themselves as "known/learnt" personality. In short those leaders/designers/developers who can't excel in their stream will find a easy way to survive by switching their roles with easier training but for a test engineer at an avg. exp of 7-10 years it may be difficult to learn automation frame work, few programming language & learning automation tools and designing skills as you are training at an advanced level compared to what you were doing before and others (coders/designers) are finding easy to get trained on lower complex skill compared to what they were doing before.
So, whats the road map for a manual guy? Manual testing is a skill for sure and one who has a strong domain and hands on will definitely survive. Manual testing in banking and finance, insurance, some of the health care, networking & security, communication systems; hardware and embedded systems etc.. will have life in future too.. But it's essential to follow these basic tips which may help you on longer run to be on job even as technology changes:
The trend of IT is fast changing and technologies are emerging day by day in rapid phase, it's a general rule that if the trend is changing and if we need to survive in the IT, we should change and evolve along with market trend. "Go with the flow" as they say it but the most difficult thing for an employee is adapting to the change and learning new technology as it come either due to personal reason or for most of them its their current organization and project work culture, tight schedule which stops their evolution as an individual resource..
Now there seems threat to many of our career if you are just a plain "Java Developer" or a "Java Script Developer" or "VB Developer" or "Manual Tester" or "PHP/CSS Developer" or even for a plain
"Project Lead/Test Lead/Team Lead/Manger" etc.. Now industry looks for a "Full Stack Developer", which means an employee can not only code front end but also for middle-ware, back-end which includes skills of Data Base design; can do build & deployment and has the ability to test and automate in a Continues Integration environment. In simple a resource should be multi talented in terms of technology he know and the skills he posses. An employee's career with a single skill or knows single technology/tool can be in greater disaster than those who have many skill set.
Today the most common buzz words are Big Data; Data Analytics; Machine Learning; Automation; IOT-Internet Of Things; Artificial Intelligence; Dev-Ops; Natural Language Processing; Automatic Programming; Robotics; Continuous Integration; Efficient Algorithms; Pattern Recognition; Voice Processing; Signal Processing; Speech Synthesis; Data Protection & Security; Networking and Telecommunication etc.. are we all up to this?! May not be "Yes" by 60-75% of people.. isn't it?
Programming languages/Tools are evolving, same language is progressing with newer versions with added features, so are we evolving either by learning newer versions of same language/tool or at least scaling our self with new language/tool?! May not be "Yes" by 60-70% of people.. isn't it?
It's not only a "Manual Tester/Testing" which has the threat but even other roles/position in IT too has threat as discussed before.. But why did I stressed on "Manual Testing"?! "Strange?!" No don't be.. I let you know why this has a greater threat when compared to other positions in IT.. At-least 35-40% of IT people are lazy to learn new things either they are not willing or they can't but somehow they are surviving till date in the organization, just see your own projects or organization structure is such that they hire moderate talent people for moderate price in order to get billing, especially in service based companies.. If so, think as a manual tester what skills you have, "Special Skill", I meant? is that a difficult skill to gain mastery? 'Yes', its special only to limited extent, like understanding the domain better than others but there is no much difficulty for other resources either in learning the tool you use or software that you runs or the process you follow or to get trained on the domain and testing aspects, just surfing the net and studying online materials can make non-testing person to crack manual testing job interview in some of the organizations.
Consider current situation, if you attend manual testing interview you can find nearly 20-40 people on an avg. facing the interview with you, just an appox. estimation. Also most of the service based company or even product based company doesn't like to pay too much for single resource instead they are showing more interest to buy couple or more fresh/non-experienced resource in the place of one moderately experienced resource who costs more. This applies even to development and design and other roles too.. Consider as we quoted before 35-40% lazy resource in each sector/role/domain/technology are facing threat for their role in future as they can't learn more advanced technology, but for their current skill of design/development if they get trained on lower complex and comparatively easy skills like manual testing process/configuration management, knowing domain, some specific tools then they will be "appearing" more skilled than a manual tester with 7-8 years experience. Low skilled Designer/Coder migrating to Automation Designer stream can be seen in coming days.
Now the same job interview which you were facing with 20-40 people will slowly become 100-150 people by adding fresh/lower experienced resources who are willing to be taken-up by firm, plus say at-least 20% people who trained out of 35-40%(people from lazy sector) who were lower skilled in development/design and moving to testing. Adding to this huge number of people coming for single job opening the interview will be made tougher by adding complex puzzles, tricky coding competition or asking frame work design patterns or asking some basics of programming or skills of configuration management; leadership & domain knowledge. So, even on having a good IT experience and a sound knowledge in domain may not yield you a job as you are competing with more people who poses themselves as "known/learnt" personality. In short those leaders/designers/developers who can't excel in their stream will find a easy way to survive by switching their roles with easier training but for a test engineer at an avg. exp of 7-10 years it may be difficult to learn automation frame work, few programming language & learning automation tools and designing skills as you are training at an advanced level compared to what you were doing before and others (coders/designers) are finding easy to get trained on lower complex skill compared to what they were doing before.
- Switch jobs which matches your domain; if tool/technology gets old but as you have system knowledge you gets added advantage
- Don't switch or work on too many different domains; Understand a particular domain along with technology trend and move towards a couple of latest/ever green domains or technology. Don't be Jack of all trades but master of none..
- Learning is good, try learning programming language, SQL/DB skills; learn automation or a framework design which puts you on safer side
- Decide your long term goal and drive hard to move towards it at the earliest
- Don't stop doing basics just because you are in top position today, understand nothing is stable. ex: if you are PL/TL don't leave coding/testing/design/configuration do it yourself at least once a week or when you are free
- If you are a good speaker/orator and can communicate easily try doing leadership training
- If you are working on one tool try to learn similar tools available in market, try learning advanced version your current tool if possible or at least know what's new available in it compared to current and previous versions of same tool
- Even scale up the version of programming language you are using w.r.t to what is available, try learning similar languages if possible
- If you are a manual functional tester then learn configuration management, do certification in testing, move ahead and learn non-functional testing concept/process along with functional testing. If you are a non-functional manual tester then try learning functional part of testing/tools/process
- Know your strength and know the emerging market need, scale up to the need but don't sleep with self-satisfaction as its a kill pill in days to come
- Just because your job/role/designation is under threat don't stop teaching/training thinking that they may grow up the ladder pushing you down. Because who knows what you did to others may not just stop there but it comes back to you now or later. Teaching makes you confident and get to know what others perspective is, if other have valid question which you haven't thought of, then it gives you knowledge
- Don't just do your job/work/role/responsibility but love it a great deal; you earn/surviving because of it
- Think nothing comes easily in life, so if you are struggling ensure others won't struggle like you, your current hard work will ensure a better tomorrow; Remember: one who works more gains (knowledge) more;
- Knowledge and Experience is worth gold; Jolt it; Blog it; Write it; Transfer it; else it may get evaporated. We can't remember all the things all the time so even a learnt man needs a reference, even a scholars, teachers makes notes
- Do certifications, either domain based/tool based or technology based/role based
- Learn every day and if you are hard worker type, then try learning smart working techniques and if you are smart worker type most often then try being hard working so you prepare yourself for future;
- Stay focused; be calm and composed but ensure to learn to behave smart based on situational needs in IT; Occasionally learn delegating skills; demand higher roles even if you are at lower level and most importantly strike work life balance; invest time for your self learning and time for your family
- Future can be predicted but can't ensure it definitely will happen in the same way as predicted; Past is over you can't correct it but you can learn from it and try to be right from today; If you have a zeal to learn & share, foresightedness to gauge the changing trend and have the flexibility to adopt, then nothing can make you "Job-Less"
i-Quote:
Today's Trend: "The Nth moment of manual test cycle is the beginning for automation"
Future Trend (when we run behind automation): "The Nth moment of automation cycle will be the new scope for manual testing" -#PMH
"The repetition of manual efforts is the trigger point for automation & the deficiency of automation is the new trigger point for manual explorations" - #PMH
Wishing you loads of luck; Let all gets a good, safe, secure job; Let each one of us gets got name, fame and money;
Good wishes!
A blog by "Infotainment Guru" (#PMH)
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