How Guild Education Automates

15th December 2023
  • Locked
Melissa Tondi's profile
Melissa Tondi

Head of Technology Enablement

How Guild Education Automates image
Talk Description

At Guild Education, we support our testing efforts with automation and are always seeking more ways to make our testing more efficient and effective. We've succeeded in many ways already and are hoping to continue that journey.

When I joined the company in 2021, we faced numerous challenges benefiting from automation. We had some siloed test automation solutions being done on each team but no guidelines on a more enterprise-wide strategy that focused on optimized and efficient solutions. We discovered that not only were we repeating tests, but that those results were not shared across multiple teams or reviewed by other quality engineers.

We've overcome them now and are achieving great results from our automation. We're benefitting from a centralized repository, but also created what we call "prime time" guidelines that both align with our software engineer counterparts and that scale. Some of those results will include deeper discussion on our bespoke "Tests as a Service" approach, meaningful metrics, and the "Leave no Trace" method.

In this talk, I'm going to share more details on those challenges and the approaches and tools we use to overcome them. I'll also share the current challenges we're facing and our future plans to solve them.

What you’ll learn

By the end of this talk, you'll be able to:

  • Understanding of the true purpose of test automation
  • Learn the drawbacks of relying on large, monolithic test suites and discover the benefits of adopting a "multiple runs for multiple duns" approach
  • Importance of shifting from a siloed approach to test automation, where automation deliverables are owned only by testing professionals
  • Learn about the "leave no trace" approach
Melissa Tondi's profile'

Melissa Tondi

Head of Technology Enablement

Melissa Tondi has spent most of her career working within software testing teams. She is a frequent speaker and writer at forums focusing on the Agile, QA/QE, and DevOps spaces and is in Enablement leadership at Campminder and a Principal Consultant at Disrupt Testing, where she assists companies to continuously improve the pursuit of quality software—from design to delivery and everything in between. In her software testing and quality engineering careers, Melissa has focused on building and organizing teams around three major tenets—efficiency, innovation, and culture – and uses the Greatest Common Denominator (GCD) approach for determining ways in which team members can assess, implement and report on day to day activities so the gap between need and value is as small as possible.
Suggested Content
Win a Professional Membership gifted by TestRail image
If you were hiring new software testers today, what are the most important skills and qualities that you'd look for?
Explore MoT
TestBash Brighton 2025 image
Wed, 1 Oct 2025
On the 1st & 2nd of October, 2025 we'll be back to Brighton for another TestBash: the largest software testing conference in the UK
MoT Intermediate Certificate in Test Automation
Elevate to senior test automation roles with mastery in automated checks, insightful reporting, and framework maintenance
This Week in Testing
Debrief the week in Testing via a community radio show hosted by Simon Tomes and members of the community