Who do you want to be? The ex-tester bemoaning the rise of AI and the disappearance of the profession they once knew? Or the expert tester using AI, automation and every available tool to become more capable and valuable than ever?
Software testing is in the era of individual responsibility. New tools and capabilities are appearing quickly, and if you don’t become proficient in them, you will be cast aside. Unfortunately, hardly any companies are willing to pay for training anymore.
Maybe you think you’ve survived so far without adapting, but trust me, the skills required five years ago will not carry you through the next five.
You Need to Own Your Development
If you want to thrive in the new era, you need to invest in your own development. There’s no way around it. But, this investment can be remarkably small.
Ten minutes a day watching YouTube videos, trying new AI prompts or reading product documentation can make a tangible difference.
Maybe you’ll add a new product feature to your arsenal, or it could be the removal of a repetitive task. Maybe an approach you’ve always avoided becomes more accessible. In all likelihood, all three, and more, very quickly.
Plus, learning creates its own momentum. Once that unfamiliar technology becomes less intimidating, new concepts will start to connect with things you already understand. Your curiosity will grow and learning will become addictive.
No Wonder Companies Stop Investing In Tools
Most testers barely use the powerful technology they have access to. They stay in their lanes, comfortable with tools and features they’ve known and used before.
- Automation remains limited.
- Integrations go untouched.
- Advanced reporting is ignored.
- AI features are treated with suspicion.
When testers don’t use the advanced features, commercial licences deliver poor returns.
But even the free open-source tools generate costs through configuration, integration, maintenance and lost time. Companies end up with fragile testing frameworks, duplicated effort and systems that only a single person understands.
The Bigger Problem and Why It’s Important
Since the financial crisis, the UK economy has turned its back on innovation and instead relied heavily on population growth to increase its overall output.
This Resolution Foundation report highlights that UK GDP per person grew by an impressive 46% during the 16 years before the financial crisis. During the following 16 years, it grew by just 4.3%.
Essentially, before the financial crisis, Britain became more prosperous primarily by becoming more productive per person, through technology and skills investment. Since the crisis, headline growth has increasingly depended on population and labour-force expansion.
Yes, GDP has continued to rise, but output per person and output per hour have barely moved.
As a nation, we failed to invest in technology and training, and instead just threw more effort at existing processes.
How Can You Build a Career in This Future?
On the one hand, this is a cautionary tale for our own careers. If you don’t invest in technology and training you will fall behind. On the other hand, these figures also describe the economy in which testers must build their careers.
Weak productivity limits wage growth. Struggling businesses become more cautious about recruitment and investment. Opportunities become harder to find, competition becomes stronger and employers place greater value on people who can make an immediate, measurable contribution.
Standing out becomes imperative, and it’s up to the individual.
The tools are available. The documentation is available. Training videos, online communities and AI assistants are available. A tester can ask an AI tool to explain a feature, generate an example or guide them through a new technique within seconds.
The testers who take advantage will:
- Become faster, more capable and more valuable.
- Help their teams deliver more from existing technology.
- Seek out new tools that will add value to the business.
- Become the people businesses fight to retain when conditions become difficult.
10 Minutes a Day is 10 Minutes More Than Most People
I have seen how quickly a small investment can produce a significant advantage in my own life.
I started playing golf around two years ago. During the first year, I turned up and played with a group of friends. We were all at roughly the same level. We enjoyed ourselves, but none of us improved very much. Our golf was literally hit and miss.
About a year ago, I decided to take it more seriously.
I paid for a few lessons, which were enormously valuable. I also found a golf professional on YouTube whose teaching style resonated with me. I began watching his videos for a few minutes each day.
The more I learned, the more enjoyable learning became. Each video gave me something new to try. Each improvement made me curious about the next part of the game.
I’d also tracked my progress on the course, fed the information back to my coach and selected videos based on problem areas.
A year later, my golf has improved dramatically.
The friends I started with still play at roughly the same level. I am closing in on a 28 handicap. Any serious golfer will know that hardly makes me the new Nick Faldo. It still represents remarkable progress from the scores I recorded when I began, an improvement of about 30 shots per round.
We started from the same place. A few minutes of deliberate learning each day created a widening gap.
The same thing is happening in software testing. You do not need to become the world’s greatest AI engineer or automation architect. You just need to become more capable than you were yesterday and more useful than the people you work with.
Watch the video. Ask the question. Read the documentation. Try the feature.
What are you doing for ten minutes a day to develop your skills?
