It was a warm afternoon when we inaugurated the terrace at our new office. Colleagues and visitors ate paella from a food truck, networked, and enjoyed the weather that easily could be every day in the south of Europe.

Earlier that day, we had a workshop where around twenty colleagues participated, mostly software developers and test engineers. The focus was on how we develop and test our products – and what steps are necessary to collect and evaluate our test data in a better way. The workshop led to interesting discussions within the group, including how we can collect and evaluate the test data we create. What level of automation we have achieved and in what way we can use new mental models to extract more information and knowledge about our products during testing. This was a good starting point when the workshop turned into the meetup where Fredrik Scheja – Test & QA Advisor /Test Architect – took on the stage. He led us through quality assurance to digital future research – which was the same theme we had during the workshop.

Fredrik started off by introducing a five-step model that provides guidance for the maturation of a test framework:

• Automation and robotics

• The merging of data

• Innovative models and approaches

• The use of AI

• Forecasting tests

And his big question of the day was why people are so uninterested in data? Because gathering a bunch of data will get you a holistic view. Implementing data will drive the objectives in the business solutions and give you new mental models. To see the test in another light – will bring value in the end.

In conclusion, Fredrik explained that making testing proactive and creating something proactive needs algorithms and data. And we see the workshop and the meetup as a good starting point for further discussions and experiments in the development department, where we can gradually increase the degree of maturity of our development environment and test framework. But it was also an exciting feeling to see how far we have come with our test framework. Sometimes it takes a sit-down to understand where you are in the process.

Are you interesting in data and testing? Visit our career site here.