The Team
Imagine having all entry-level developers work on a project together. Imagine having a leader or manager that had never participated in a software development project. It would be chaos!
There’s no way an experienced software leader would assemble a team like this. Not if they wanted a product from the group in a reasonable timeframe with some expectation of quality.
Junior developers aren’t a problem. We’ve all been junior level. If you’re learning new things you get to be a noob all the time. I recently felled some trees with my Dad. It was my first time. I had a lot to learn. Not only did I feel like a noob, I was one. I had to understand that fact and accept it to stay safe.
Having Junior developers on a team is not a problem
Team Composition
The problem with the team above has more to do with the summed experience of the team.
A good leader can run a software team if they have strong technical people around them.
If the team we mentioned had even one strong technical person and a strong leader, their chances of success go up. A balanced team would be even stronger.
Bad Developers
We know as experienced software leaders that a bad developer is not a net zero influence on the team. A bad developer is a net negative. Stronger developers have to re-do the bad developer’s work. That takes the better developer’s time away from features, direction, time with others, mentoring, etc. It slows down the team as they are occupied with fixing all the issues with the code the bad developer creates.
Inexperienced Test Automation Teams
Often, we allow test automation to be stocked with bad developers or newbies. If we wouldn’t do this for the applications why do it with automation? Shouldn’t the test automation code be stronger and more robust than the application it runs against?
We need automation code to be perfectly credible in order to test our services.
Beware the inexperienced automation team
So many companies introduce testers with no coding experience to code, then expect them to automate. Often I see teams of test automation engineers lead by people with no software development experience.
If your org is thinking making a transition to using test automation. Don’t stock the automation team with 100% newbies. Get some guidance.
If you like the way we do things at Beaufort Fairmont – if you like automation success – contact us and use our people and experience to balance your team.
[…] Beware the inexperienced automation team, Beaufort FairmontWe wouldn’t allow a team to only consist of entry-level developers. So why would we allow inexperienced test automation engineers or testers with no coding experience develop automated tests? […]