Tech Talks With Rafaela Azevedo

Ever since the world has started progressing towards digitalization, the need for quality-rich and dynamic tech solutions has significantly increased. Be it infusing the vision of security or making the most with the product performance, Quality Assurance services have become an inevitable part of the digital transformation.  

At BugRaptors, we constantly make efforts to adopt the latest technologies, methodologies, and best practices that can help upgrade our internal operations, ensuring better deliveries. From the implementation of agile to hybrid test automation frameworks, we strive to sustain innovation in our process progressing towards improved virtual landscape.  

Since the approach needs testers and developers to understand the impact of newly adopted practices, we always try to connect with industry experts pursuing different technologies and approaches to testing.  

This time, our in-house expert, Parteek Goel, had a conversation with Rafaela Azevedo, an SC Cleared QA Consultant from United Kingdom. With a massive list of tech skills like Selenium, WebDriver, Protractor, Jmeter, Locust, Artillery, Postman, Newman, Coded UI, Cucumber, Specflow, Calabash (IOS / Android), Appium, Espresso, XCUITest, Robotium, Detox, Android Studio, Spoon, Ruby, RubyMine, Javascript, and many more, Rafaela is working as a Full Stack SDET for more than 13 years.  

With the knowledge of all the advanced testing tools and technologies, she has 11+ years of experience in test automation and more than 7 years of experience in Leadership, Delivering and Releasing software on different platforms (Mobile, Desktop, Web). She became a STEM Ambassador and a STEM Women Member in 2020, making an impact and bringing more people to the STEM area. Besides, she is also an active contributor to TestProject and instructor of Test Automation University. 

With all that huge list of accomplishments for Rafaela, let us quickly jump to the interview and start gaining a vision of her becoming a tester. The session even highlighted the concept of managed QA environment and things that must be kept in mind when working on automation testing.  

Let’s begin! 

Parteek: What compelled you to become a tester? 

Rafaela: First my goal was to become a web developer and then when I got an internship as a manual tester at a startup, I changed my mind and pursued my career as a QA and automation, so I developed my skills as a QA and also increased the programming skills that was something I really enjoyed. 

Parteek: Being a #womenintech, do you think gender bias is still there specially in IT organizations? 

Rafaela: I think it depends on the country, here in UK is more common to find woman in IT careers, but in Brazil was more rare to find places with a good balance between genders. I don't really stress too much about it, but I notice that people in general not only in IT assume woman in general are fragile, which is a female stereotype around the world. 

Parteek: What is your opinion on Managed QA environment or Individual Environment? 

Rafaela: The difference is massive, having a good structured QA Environment guide everybody to strive and achieve the goal easier. Also, it helps to improve all the stages of QA and spread the quality responsibility across the team.  

Parteek: What are some risks associated with automated testing? 

Rafaela: You can have false positives, being not up to date. The main and more dangerous one is the false positive where you think everything is passing but actually there is a bug on your tests and also on your app. 

Parteek: When selecting an automation tool, what features will you look for? 

Rafaela: It depends on the project and what are the goals, the timeframe and the team and skills we have, so I always change the things that I need to consider individually for each situation. 

Parteek: What mistakes should one avoid while performing automation testing? 

Rafaela: Automating more than what you need, having duplicated tests, too long tests. I would say these are the main ones apart of the false positive, so the ideal is to also have a PR review stage after the code is done. 

Parteek: If you were going to write a book, what would it be about? 

Rafaela: Blockchain tests 

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

Rafaela: My blog, LinkedIn or twitter: 

• https://azevedorafaela.com/ 

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/azevedorafaela/ 

• https://twitter.com/azevedorafa_com 

At BugRaptors, we constantly aim at improving the digital experience while taking the latest industry insights to testers, developers, and QA enthusiasts.  

Just in case, you have any queries surrounding QA automation or software testing services, feel free to reach our team through info@bugraptors.com