Sheetal Hulloli, McAfee
Santosh Sahu, McAfee
Mayur Premi, McAfee
Often, the silos of Development and Blackbox Testing groups within an Engineering team result from issues that are more than mere skill differences. There is a much larger cultural aspect that usually needs addressing for an engineering team that has clear-cut Development and Blackbox Testing roles but struggles to deliver quality software. While an all-around engineering team must have various different skills, we want to highlight the importance and the role of “Software Development Engineers in Test” in bringing about a culture change in engineering paradigm.
When our own team at Intel Security made the conscious decision to arm the team with SDETs, little was known as to what they would do and how their role would be different than the clear-cut demarcations that already existed. As we found out, it was a journey that resulted in greater collaboration, testing of areas unheard of in the team, increased operational efficiencies and a mature engineering team.
In this paper, we want to share with the audience our experience of how SDETs were change agents in the evolution of our engineering team, what challenges we faced along the way and how we were able to overcome barriers as a team. We hope to highlight the following:
- What a model testing team should comprise of in skill sets (SDET, Automation, and Product Experts)
- How the role of SDETs differ from Blackbox/System testing roles
- Why SDETs are important in fast-paced engineering environments (with our own example of a complex product platform)
- How to hire, train and engage successful SDETs
- What metrics to introduce to measure success
- Making role models out of SDETs
- Seeing measurable improvements in product quality by using SDETs
- Using SDETs to take the team to the next level
Our paper will cite real examples and we hope that our experience will give engineering leaders an insight into how they can bring about change in their teams but more importantly that we will encourage young engineering professionals to look at becoming future SDETs.
Sheetal Hulloli, Santosh Sahu, Mayur Premi 2018 Technical Presentation, Abstract, Paper, Slides
