<Interviewing Leandro Melendez: Automation Testing>

Automation Testing, Productivity, & Testing Challenges Of The Future

At BugRaptors, we always strive to offer the most updated and experienced insights from throughout the industry to testing enthusiasts. More importantly, we believe that interacting with testing professionals from diverse regions and cultures allow us to feed our curiosity of establishing best practices for Quality Assurance and testing.

Though there was a time when testing seemed to an insignificant part of software development lifecycle, the rise in demand for technology, extensive competition, and of course the COVID-19 pandemic has made people understand the importance of testing.

This time, our very own expert and Vice President, Quality Assurance, BugRaptors, Sandeep Vashisht, interviewed Leandro Melendez, an avid performance test manager and consultant. Leandro is a multi-tasker with rich proficiency on QA, especially Performance and Load testing practices along with strong knowledge of tools like WinRunner, LoadRunner, JMeter, NeoLoad, AppDyn, Dynatrace, and many more.

Besides, Leandro has more than 20 years of experience polishing his developer, DBA, project manager, and several other IT skills making him a QA and testing services pro. During his conversation with Sandeep Vashisht, Leandro made several revelations on automation in performance testing while sharing his secrets on productivity. Moreover, he made some special highlights in context to testing challenges of the future that tester communities are likely to face in the near future.

So, without taking much of your time, let us quickly jump on our conversation with Leandro Melendez and explore his perspective on the present situation of testing industry. Let’s begin.

Sandeep Vashisht: What will be the most In-Demand testing skills in 2022?

Leandro Melendez: In my personal feeling, I think good monitoring and instrumentation. As well as knowing some of the most popular and commercial scripting tools. And last, truly understand continuous methodologies, together with the toolset and knowledge it requires.

Sandeep Vashisht: What’s the best and easiest way to get a start with performance testing?

Leandro Melendez: It used to be scripting protocol-based load tests. Nowadays, I would say understanding APM metrics, Web performance (Front end), and performance requirements.

Sandeep Vashisht: What are your views about automation in performance testing?

Leandro Melendez: It is overused as the industry often mixes performance with load testing. Automation is really important in specific circumstances. But in these modern days, the majority of performance testing should not be done through load test automations. Instrumentation, monitoring, shift left performance assurance, shift right release and monitor practices, and many others should be done even before you dare to think about automating performance tests.

Sandeep Vashisht: How do you continue to learn in order to stay on top of things within your role?

Leandro Melendez: First of all, I am a fan of the YouTube university. Nowadays you can always find someone explaining your tough topics and giving you almost every information you need. Together with some learning platforms like Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, Plazi, and many others. And as well, I am a constant reader. Reading in total ~30 to 50 books a year, I try that at least a third of them are Testing and IT related. Even old literature can teach you tons.

Sandeep Vashisht: How do you stay productive while working from home?

Leandro Melendez: I stick to a routine as if I was not working from home. Wake up early every day (5:30 AM) start by having coffee, exercising, reading, do some writing, breakfast and then start to get ready. By 8:30-ish I am at the computer ready for meetings and start working. Even dressed up as if I was going to the office. I take lunch at the indicated times and try to log off from work-related items on time to keep the motivation.

Sandeep Vashisht: What’s the biggest challenge you have with your specific role right now and how are you going to overcome it?

Leandro Melendez: For me it still and frequently is to teach users, customers, and coworkers' better approaches to do performance, Agile, and general QA practices. For this I try to generate as much content as possible, to help everyone, even if I am not there anymore, to understand what needs to be done. As well, dealing with internal corporate politics. You need to be able to understand business, personal motivations, social, and all the items that influence navigating through the corporate world.

Sandeep Vashisht: What will be the toughest obstacles for Test Teams in 2021?

Leandro Melendez: Not sure if many had troubles adapting to remote work, but that could be in play. Although, I think the toughest would be the back to normal, and defining how to orchestrate work, return, and coexist again and seriously for many, to wear pants again.

Sandeep Vashisht: What is the best way to get in touch with you?

Leandro Melendez: Everyone can reach out to me on all of the social networks and YouTube. Look for me as Leandro Melendez, Señor Performo, or SrPerf on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. And old-style, to preguntas@perfbytes.com.

Drop me a message on any of those channels. I will be more than happy to say hi and answer any questions or comments.

Software Testing is no longer a small business. With rapid digitalization of diverse industry verticals like healthcare, banking, retail, manufacturing, and other processes, the world now needs technology which is stable, reliable and meet certain standards of quality.

At BugRaptors, we always try to keep you updated with the expert’s opinion on the changing scenarios within the QA industry. If you have any doubts or queries related to the Dynamics in the QA and testing industry, feel free to reach our experts for a quick consultation.

If you are an influencer who have some interesting knowledge to showcase, we can help you take your vision to the world. You can write to us at info@bugraptors.com

Happy Testing! Good Luck!

Sandeep Vashisht

Sandeep Vashisht is the Manager – Quality Assurance at BugRaptors. With experience of more than 15 years, Sandeep specializes in delivering mobile, web, content management, and eCommerce solutions. He holds a strategic QA vision and has the ability to inspire and mentor quality assurance. He is an expert with a grip on project plan development, test strategy development, test plan development, test case & test data review.