PNSQC’s Philip Lew interviews the tap|QA VP
Jennifer Bonine is the VP of Global Delivery and Solutions for tap|QA, Inc., an IT services firm specializing in QA solutions for businesses. Bonine’s career includes working with Fortune 500 companies in quality assurance and process improvement in several domains. She recently has been helping companies large and small integrate IoT and connected systems into their business landscapes.
You may have also seen Bonine interviewing industry experts for Stickyminds. Recently, she found herself on the other side of the microphone as PNSQC’s program chair Philip Lew asked her about testing trends, artificial intelligence and QA, VR and AR, and her upcoming keynote and workshop for PNSQC 2018.
The following are some highlights of the interview. Click the links to watch Bonine’s responses to specific questions. Or, watch the full 15-minute interview.
Philip Lew (PL): What trends in the industry are people discussing?
Jennifer Bonine (JB): One thing I saw was very unique. Agile was not really discussed. None of the discussions I was engaged in were around Agile. Primarily, I heard a lot around the varying perspectives of automation.
PL: Do you do CI/CD? Do you do DevOps? What does that look like?
JB: For the first time I’m hearing more around Devops the phrases “shift left” and “shift right”. Shifting performance and performance testing in your DevOps cycle to the left. The other thing to shift left is security.
PL: What kinds of things shift right?
JB: There are some components that you are not able to do until you have everything. We’re going to do more for performance and security. Shifting right will continue performance, security and functional testing in production.
The other topic that was big was AI. How does that play into what we’re going to do and what we’re going to do from a testing standpoint? Two key things: All of us need to get educated…and number two the concept of “trust, but verify.”
An emerging trend is VR and AR — virtual reality and augmented reality. Taking AI and adding another piece to it. Imagine you want to create a new kitchen — you’re remodeling. Instead of going to Home Depot to look at cabinets, you have an AI app for your home. You pick out countertops, cabinets, everything. You can drop it into your house and walk around in it.
PL: Won’t that have big implications on QA and testing?
JB: Exactly! You hear all the talk of automation — that you won’t need testers — but when you look at it, if you like being a manual tester, then you should stay to the right. In order to test VR and AR, you need to manually figure it out before you’ll ever be able to automate it.
PL: While here at StarEast, have you seen any cool vendors?
JB: For the last couple of years, DevOps has been the big thing at conferences. We’re still talking about it but now we’re injecting terms like DevSecOps into it. And now we’ve got this AI thing. You’ve got vendors who really play in that space: How to make better decisions, how to do more predictive analysis, how to hire people better.
PL: You’re giving a keynote and workshop at PNSQC; what can you tell us about your keynote?
JB: It’s about social factors and understanding social dynamics, which includes influencing people, communication skills, problem-solving. People who figure that piece out, with their technical aptitude, are the winning combination.
PL: And your workshop is on mind mapping?
JB: Mind maps look like a map of your brain. The way your brain processes information is you pull things from different places — by association. What you’re doing with a mind map you can literally go back to your office the next day and start using them.
We process pictures 30,000 times faster than words. That’s how our minds work. If I give you a picture of a project you’re going to process it that much faster. Efficiency, velocity, speed… not having communication gaps… we should all be doing this.
We are surely living in exciting and changing times for QA, and Bonine’s work is sure to inspire. Read more about her Closing Keynote, The Lost Art of Live Communication: Get Connected to Your Customers and see how to utilize mind mapping in her Wednesday, October 10, workshop at PNSQC: Use Mind Maps to Increase Team Velocity and Communication to Customers.
Join us On the Road to Quality this October!
