Episode 150 Tara Walton, Test Automation Developer and Community Builder

On this podcast, we’re always a fan of our guests, but it’s not as often that our guest is a fan of us! This episode, we’re speaking to Tara Walton, herself a listener of the Fireside podcast. Tara is a test automation developer and a community builder, and she joins us to talk about how being a jack of all trades means Developer Advocacy might just be the right step for you.

Tara has done a lot of work in testing and quality assurance, and she takes us through the history of how this space has evolved over the years. One constant seems to be the ebb and flow of a particular company mindset:

Step 1: Hire testers.
Step 2: Watch the quality of your product go up.
Step 3: Realise you have such an amazing product that you probably don’t need testers anymore!
Step 4: Fire your testers
Step 5: Realise you made a terrible mistake and hire them all back.

And so the cycle continues.

Tara goes into detail on why, as a test automation developer, preventing a mistake is much easier than fixing one. Documentation is key, as information that lives in someone’s head doesn’t do much good for anyone except that person.

Finally she gives us her thoughts on how testing and QA will continue to grow and change now that AI has entered the playing field. As always, things will need to be road tested before hitting the highway, and Tara will certainly have her hands full over the next few years.

Reach out to Tara here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarawalton/

Find out more and listen to previous podcasts here: https://www.voxgig.com/podcast

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