In this interview, HPE's Silvia Siqueira details how to better test your applications in the digital age. She explains how we accelerate applications to market without sacrificing quality, and tells why QA engineers and developers must embrace continuous quality by shifting left.
Jennifer Bonine: All right, we are back with one of our last virtual interviews for today, so make sure and tune back in tomorrow for more. For today, our last interviewee is Silvia from HPE ...
Silvia Siqueira: Silvia Siqueira, yeah. How do they say? The last is the best, right?
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah. Exactly. We saved the best for last.
Silvia Siqueira: Exactly.
Jennifer Bonine: Today. Yup. Thanks for joining us, Silvia, I appreciate it.
Silvia Siqueira: Well, thanks for having me.
Jennifer Bonine: Some of what, I think, we wanted to talk about that was interesting ... so Silvia and I get to chat before you all get to see us, and a lot is happening around this, what we call the era of digital transformation. Right?
Silvia Siqueira: Exactly.
Jennifer Bonine: Transforming everything into being digital. It was funny, Jeff Payne and I were talking about how pretty soon people will not remember things like job ads in the newspaper. Right? You used to ...
Silvia Siqueira: I did that.
Jennifer Bonine: ... look for the ads, and then we were talking about how you would mail your resume in. People would be like, "What's mail?" Right? How do you get physical mail?
Silvia Siqueira: I am surprised every time that I talk to kids, and you know the funny part that I want to mention to you is exactly this transformation that companies are facing now, and then something that I hear sometimes about testers and developers, they're like, "Oh, I'm not responsible to develop this cool application." They feel guilt for not doing the cool applications, but the importance also of the practical applications, right?
Jennifer Bonine: Yes.
Silvia Siqueira: But in terms of digital transformation, companies are going through a lot. Right?
Jennifer Bonine: Right.
Silvia Siqueira: Especially with the new, the millennials, the new applications and how to move those old ideas to the new. And I have a story to tell you, right?
Jennifer Bonine: Perfect.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah, my fiancé, he likes to download music. Do you download music?
Jennifer Bonine: Oh, absolutely. Right.
Silvia Siqueira: My kids, they like to listen to Pandora, Spotify. They like iTunes. Do you like that, too?
Jennifer Bonine: Yup. Absolutely.
Silvia Siqueira: You’re totally like me. I like both. The kids, when they heard that their daddy download music, they're like, "Oh, my gosh. This is ancient."
Jennifer Bonine: Right. That's ancient to download music. Why would you do that?
Silvia Siqueira: It's so interesting, right? Because looking about all of these companies going through this transformation—how to keep the process going, how to keep the engines running, how to mix it together and still deliver quality. It's a major challenge, right? It's where we talk about agile, but also talk about DevOps, integrate all of that and put all this process and technology around those environments to accelerate delivery and accelerate quality.
Jennifer Bonine: Yup.
Silvia Siqueira: It's interesting. Then with HPE now, I work as a product marketing manager, it's specifically for performance testing solutions, right? But I can cover the other solutions that we work, too. It's interesting because we are also facing that, right? This transformation in our customers and you need to be prepared for that. We are getting prepared providing then solutions as you know probably ELM and UFT, etc., but we are coming with a new set of solutions that helps also this innovation. Solutions to be test in the cloud. Solutions for fast, for agile, so that's super important. More important than that that I want to give as a tip for our friends here, right? Doing the quality, something that sometimes testers don't think about is how to collect the information from the end user. Right. Mobile applications are so funny, right?
Jennifer Bonine: Right.
Silvia Siqueira: I get so emotional. How about you?
Jennifer Bonine: Oh, absolutely.
Silvia Siqueira: Right.
Jennifer Bonine: People are very fickle. We're not as brand loyal with mobile apps, right? We'll like an app, and if the app starts not performing or doesn't do the things we want, we hit delete.
Silvia Siqueira: Delete and who are you going to hate? The company. Even the application.
Jennifer Bonine: Right. Exactly.
Silvia Siqueira: Do you think testers have a big responsibility?
Jennifer Bonine: Oh, it's a huge responsibility. Right? I mean all the trends we're seeing is more investment and quality and testing because the consumers have a shorter, as you've mentioned, a shorter attention span.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Bonine: For things to not work.
Silvia Siqueira: Then everyone now is in technology. When I see it's little babies walking on top of the tablets, they already want quality. They cannot wait.
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah. No.
Silvia Siqueira: Then it's important to understand the user experience and it's hard sometimes to get that information. That loop feedback app, so something that I want to leave as a tip today besides the tools and technologies that you have think about process, think about the culture, the change, about everyone getting together and doing one job and then more than that knowing what the end user wants through reveals and, also, through data from operations. Now it's bring the data from operations. Understand what real end-users wants. Focus the development on that. Some of our solutions are so cool that now we are automating some way that we understand what the user wants and then bring and create a ready script should be tested on top of those capabilities. It's, basically, helping the life of the tester and the developer to put all together and deliver what the user experience needs.
Jennifer Bonine: Well and I've heard a lot lately about changes even to the role of tester as being customer advocate, so they talk more about ... there's even some organizations I've heard that are starting to rebrand, so to speak, the testing organization into the customer advocate group where they're helping being that advocate for the end consumer because they're the ones who are testing it as if they are an end consumer a lot of times of whatever the mobile app or the website or the product or whatever it ends up being, so having that focus on do you really understand what some of the pain is of the end user and using these thing. Now not only do we have the pain of just a particular group of end user, it's multi-generational.
Silvia Siqueira: You're totally right. Even the, let's say, the level of knowledge and role of the tester. The tester is not just that guy that's going to find the bug anymore. Right?
Jennifer Bonine: Right.
Silvia Siqueira: He's the guy that's going to understand really the end user experience, right? I would say even like there is people that does today user experience interfaces, but the tester is the one that basically needs to have that knowledge to provide quality. It's super important. Not only that, he goes one step further. He also is helping to even find, engineer a little bit, how to resolve together with developer.
Jennifer Bonine: Collaborating on that.
Silvia Siqueira: It's what's they're calling now like a tester engineer is above and just like doing the test. The testers are not going to go away at all.
Jennifer Bonine: No.
Silvia Siqueira: They're here to stay.
Jennifer Bonine: They're here to stay. Yeah. Exactly.
Silvia Siqueira: They have a very, very important part of that, especially, I would say, my personal applications.
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah. Exactly. No and it's really funny. I think five years ago at these conferences we were having conversations about the evolution of testing and people were saying with the advent of Agile getting more popular and gaining momentum, self guided teams, everyone being responsible for testing, not just a tester, that people were saying, "Well, what's the future? Are testers going to around? Are we going to need testers? Are we going to need this as a discipline?"
Silvia Siqueira: Exactly. I remember.
Jennifer Bonine: Now, it's so firmly rooted and everyone understands with some of the security breaches that happened with major corporations, with the issues that people had with not being able to have performed a applications as peak volume times like holidays and Christmas. For a retailer to go down at one of their peak holiday times is disastrous. When you talk about apps not performing like during major sporting events that aren't performing, those are big issues. You need to take care of those things and testers are very firmly rooted at the center of a lot of these challenges in helping to solve those, I think.
Silvia Siqueira: Bring testers more in agile in that collaboration with the developer. That's integrations. That's key. Interesting that we also did the World Quality Report.
Jennifer Bonine: Yes, I was going to have you mention that. That is such a fabulous report for people who haven't seen it, so the World Quality Report. I believe if you go to your website, can you download it from there?
Silvia Siqueira: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
Jennifer Bonine: Okay.
Silvia Siqueira: I can even tell later that website.
Jennifer Bonine: Perfect.
Silvia Siqueira: But what I wanted to mention is in this report we are seeing more and more this role that I mentioned about test engineer, right? It's growing now. The second thing that we saw in the survey, too, is the growth of companies doing more, moving more for digital transformation. Then embracing more Agile and bringing these organizations together and the interesting piece is that some years ago they were like talking about Test Center of Excellence a lot and then they stopped talking, but now they are coming back again.
Jennifer Bonine: They're talking about it again. Yeah.
Silvia Siqueira: It's so interesting because all these data points are there in the survey. Basically, 1,500 people answer around the globe. Super good information.
Jennifer Bonine: Wide sample. It's, for all of you out there that have leaders and executives who like to drive by data, this is a perfect data point to use. I mean it has lots of information. Statistics, as you said, about all of these organizations around the globe.
Silvia Siqueira: Absolutely recommend.
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah. Well, absolutely. I think it's interesting, too. I think I saw in there, what was it? Almost a 40 percent increase in spend in quality by ... Yeah.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah, exactly.
Jennifer Bonine: On organizations?
Silvia Siqueira: Amazing. Like in two, three years, that's the ...
Jennifer Bonine: The projection.
Silvia Siqueira: Uh huh, the projection.
Jennifer Bonine: 40 percent.
Silvia Siqueira: 40 percent of IT, I mean development, is going to be in quality. Yay.
Jennifer Bonine: That's great news for those out there that have said, "Gosh, we've struggled to get budget and we've struggled for people to understand the importance." I think there's a real shift now where people are starting to get it and they're placing more importance on quality.
Silvia Siqueira: Shows like this are so important for the community. I have been talking to a lot of people in the show and I have been in the booth a little bit, just did some presentations it's be amazing. The feedback that you're getting because people need this type of knowledge. People need this type of network to know what's happening and then bring it back because we are all running as crazy.
Jennifer Bonine: Everyone's busy. We're all busier than ever, right?
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah.
Jennifer Bonine: But you need to stop and get some of that good information and those data points.
Silvia Siqueira: By the way, I have very good news for you. Not for you just, but ...
Jennifer Bonine: Not just me. All of you probably, as well.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah, we are coming with new releases in a couple of weeks for our products.
Jennifer Bonine: Wow.
Silvia Siqueira: You have big news that, unfortunately, I cannot mention, but know is regarding ALM in, basically, a couple of week we are going to have something very new, very cool. I can just say that is next generation. I cannot say anything else.
Jennifer Bonine: Oh, wow.
Silvia Siqueira: It's a secret.
Jennifer Bonine: Will there be an official ... so for people looking out that use the HP tool set now, particularly use ALM, are looking for that news, will they see an announcement where there's going to be a big release?
Silvia Siqueira: Mm-hmm.
Jennifer Bonine: Like we see with Apple and all the other companies? You'll have a big launch?
Silvia Siqueira: Absolutely. Uh huh. Yes.
Jennifer Bonine: They'll say, "Here's what's coming out," and they'll be able to get that?
Silvia Siqueira: We're definitely going to do a webinar to this community, for the TechWell community ...
Jennifer Bonine: Great.
Silvia Siqueira: Out there. There is tons of good information coming.
Jennifer Bonine: Awesome.
Silvia Siqueira: In a couple of weeks.
Jennifer Bonine: Something to look for, it sounds like, for everyone out there that uses ALM to look for in a couple of weeks. That webinar that'll be available for the TechWell community.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah.
Jennifer Bonine: Tune into that if you're using those products and sounds like some really exciting things around the tools.
Silvia Siqueira: Then I just want to close with two very good tips here for you.
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah.
Silvia Siqueira: And for you guys. Stayed tuned for ALM information for the WQR, World Quality Report information.
Jennifer Bonine: Yeah.
Silvia Siqueira: I'm going to say the website: www.hpe.com/software/ALM, and then you can get all the information and on top of that if you want just to manage the user experience of your website and see how that's going and get a very cool report to impress your manager to say, "Look, this is how we're performing," or, "Maybe here is the problems we are having and need to something," right? You're going to go the same website that I mentioned. It's going to be www.hpe.com/software/insights. Remember the word "insights."
Jennifer Bonine: "Insights."
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah, you're going to get insights about your website.
Jennifer Bonine: Wow.
Silvia Siqueira: That's important for you to see how the user experience is regarding to your website.
Jennifer Bonine: Right. Oh, wonderful.
Silvia Siqueira: In three minutes you get like a fifteen, twenty-page report and I think you're going to impress your manager.
Jennifer Bonine: Wow.
Silvia Siqueira: Or even yourself.
Jennifer Bonine: Right. That's impressive. Just to have that tool set available to them.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah.
Jennifer Bonine: Hopefully, all of you out there got those two websites that you can go to to get great information. Download the World Quality Report. Go get the insights information around your website, your user experience. You'll have that report. You'll just have tons of information to help you out.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah. Absolutely.
Jennifer Bonine: Great tips.
Silvia Siqueira: Then stay tuned because we have news.
Jennifer Bonine: Yes, and stay tuned for the big news.
Silvia Siqueira: Yes.
Jennifer Bonine: Everyone has to tune in for the big news. Silvia, thank you so much for being here.
Silvia Siqueira: Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
Jennifer Bonine: I appreciate it.
Silvia Siqueira: Yeah.
Jennifer Bonine: Stay tuned for the next Lighting Strikes the Keynotes and more interviews tomorrow. Thanks, everyone, for tuning in.
With 25 years in IT organizations, Silvia uniquely combines experience in process, technology and leadership. She started her career in IT operations, which gave her a deep knowledge of IT infrastructure and hands-on experience in several technologies. She transitioned to consulting, working for large vendors to help customers improve their IT services and applications by deploying new solutions and processes. As an ITIL consultant, she has provided advice on service design issues, such as capacity & availability planning, service operations and continuous improvement. Currently, Silvia is Worldwide Senior Manager of Product Marketing for HP Performance & Lifecycle Virtualization products. Over the past 8 years, she has focused her efforts in applications development and testing for DevOps. With a passion, she wants to deliver cutting-edge solutions for the best user experience, with speed and quality in trending technologies, such as Mobile, Cloud and Big Data. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering to improve the lives of people in need, and walking golf courses with her fiancé.
