Page - 36 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

36 F. Faber 5 TheRoleofaTestEngineer A test engineer was and is someone who can act as intermediate between business and IT. A test engineer can connect the requirements from the business side to the technical implementation of IT side. This can be an enabler for an ongoing conversation between Business and IT. With DevOps, this conversation must keep going to makesure thecustomer is in thecenterof the action. InDevOps it ismore likely to have engineers with different skillsets present in a team. The function of a conversationenabler is required.A test engineercan bridge the gap betweenDev andOps,becausequality iswhatconnects these two.Test engineerscanplayavital role in this conversation. They can facilitate that quality is a shared responsibility in the team. Quality can be the most important topic that brings teammates closer together. Engineers can give their view on quality based on their own expertise. A test engineer can make sure that all these different views are combined in a single test strategy. Test engineers in DevOps are not the only one responsible for preparing and executing test cases. T-shaped engineers with different kinds of expertise should also be able to prepare and execute test cases. Test engineers can act as coaches to their team members and help them understand how to test. The test expertise from a test engineershouldbesharedwithin the team. 5.1 T-Shaped,Test Shaped A T-shaped test engineer should start with making sure his or her own expertise fits inDevOps.The test expertiseshouldcontainknowledgeandskills to gather the correct requirements for the system under test. From these requirements test cases can be created and executed using test techniques. The test expertise should also containknowledgeonhowtochooseanduse thecorrect toolingin theprocess.This expertisediffersnot fromthe existingroleof test engineeroutsideDevOps. With all the automation present in DevOps, a test engineer needs to have technical skills and knowledge to implement testing in Automation. From Test Automation to ContinuousDelivery,a test engineermustbe able to fit in where the teamhas implementedautomation.Thisusuallymeans thata test engineerneeds to have some basic coding skills and understand the structure of most programming languages.Next to technicalskillsa testengineermustunderstandTestAutomation and be able to implement it in a fitting test strategy. Following the T-shaped model you could say that programming knowledge is part of the horizontal bar and need not be an in-depth knowledge and skill. Test automation and complementary test techniquesshouldbepartof theverticalbarand theTest expertiseofanengineer. Test engineers can act as intermediaries between Business and IT or between differentkindsofexpertise inaDevOpsteam.Thisenables themtogainknowledge from different parties present in the team. They should be able to gain knowledge, and this canhelp themexpandthehorizontalbarof theirT-shape.