Sriratna Josyula, Zillow
Jonathan Li On Wing, Zillow
Testing is one of the fields of Software Engineering that has been very rapidly evolving over time. The latest evolution is the departure of the traditional testing roles. Various companies like Microsoft had previously a ratio of 1:2 Software Development Engineers in Test (SDETs aka Testers) to Software Development Engineers (SDEs aka Developers), have converted their SDETs to generic Software Engineers.
Until about 5 years ago, product testing involved some combination of manual and automated testing that ran into hundreds, if not thousands of test cases. Turnaround time for a test would be anywhere from few days to few weeks. Once shipped, if a product had a major bug, it would be part of a service pack or the next version, testing for which would again consume the same amount of time as before.
Fast forward to the current day – software is largely shipped as services, instead of as products – which makes it very easy for bugs to be fixed if found. This is one of the biggest reason that has caused companies to take a very different approach towards testing.
As a result, we see shorter test passes, faster ship cycles and fewer resources dedicated to testing. But, that does not mean that a software can be shipped without being properly tested.
This talk is an effort to shed light on what lies in the future for testing as a discipline and how to stay relevant in this field.
Sriratna Josyula, Jonathan Li On Wing, 2018 Technical Presentation, Abstract, Paper
