How To Win With Automation And Influence People - Gwen Diagram

18th May 2018
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Gwen Diagram's profile
Gwen Diagram

Head of Engineering

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Talk Description

Choosing an automation framework can be hard. When Gwen started at her current role there were nine different test automation frameworks in use for acceptance testing and a lot of the tests had been abandoned and were not running as part of the CI solution. If test automation is not running, what value could it add? The tests that were being run were labelled only as Functional tests and replaced unit tests. These tests covered component, integration and sometimes even end to end testing. Entire layers of testing were missing which made refactoring and receiving quick feedback difficult.

This is an experience report from when Gwen joined a large organisation and how, with the help of other members of the team, created a clear multi team automation solution. By implementing practices such as pairing, cross team code reviews and clear descriptions of what layers of testing covered what the teams came together to write clear, useful automation.

If you have a team working on multiple products, implementing a framework that can be picked up easily when moving between teams is essential and within this talk, Gwen will explain how to present the ideas to not only members of the team but also, how to get senior management on board with delivering an easy to use, multi-layered framework.

Takeaways:

Attendees will understand the different layers of testing - and how to sell that idea to not only within the team but outside to senior management as well.

They will understand how to solve the problem of frameworks not covering all layers of automation.

Attendees will find out how to get all members of the team on board to create tests at all layers, not just the testers or the developers.

What you’ll learn

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

  • TBA
Gwen Diagram's profile'

Gwen Diagram

Head of Engineering

Gwen Diagram is a technology professional from Leeds who specialises in testing.  She is an avid automation evangelist with a focus on testing complemented by repeatable build processes with monitoring. She has had varied roles throughout her career including Scrum Master at a Start Up, Engineering Manager at a bank and DevOps kid at a large Financial Services organisation. She is currently the Head of Engineering at Glean in Leeds.

As a strong believer in making the tech industry as open and punk as possible, she co-organises a twice yearly free day long testing conference called the Leeds Testing Atelier.  She speaks regularly at local meet-up groups, Agile Yorkshire and Leeds DevOps, duels with creative types at events like the Tech Off, speaks internationally at conferences such as Nordic Testing Days in Tallinn and was the closing keynote at Agile on the Beach in Falmouth, UK in 2018.

Outside of work, you will usually find her hanging around a Natural History Museum somewhere in the world marvelling at how incredibly excellent dinosaurs are, feeding pigeons or ducks or obsessing over transport.

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