To connect our Tribal Qonf Speakers and Audience better, we interviewed our speakers over a few important questions. The conversations we had were just amazing.
In this edition, we are publishing the Interview we did with Lavanya Mohan. Lavanya answered many interesting questions and we are sure you will enjoy the read.
Tell us a little about what inspired you to become a tester?
I had a professor in college who had taken up teaching after over 10 years of experience in IT because he had a passion for it. He taught us Software Testing and almost all his lectures were filled with either demos, real-life scenarios, or us trying different things practically.
He inspired us to do exploratory testing and scripting. I learnt a lot and also thoroughly enjoyed software testing. I believe he was one of the early influencers who set my career path in this direction.
What or who has been the greatest influence in your professional life?
Lavanya: There have been many people who have influenced me to a great extent in my professional life. Although it will not be practical to list them all here, I would like to take this opportunity to mention 2 people who I was lucky to work with on multiple projects – Anay Nayak and Anand Bagmar. They’re both masters in their craft, highly self-motivated, constantly seeking to learn more and improve things around them.
There are also many women testers I follow online (some of whom I have never met in person) who have had a great influence on me and who I look up to.
How are you practicing your skills during COVID-19?
Lavanya: With everyone working from home, I did start finding my (office) work hours getting longer and more chores to get done at home. Luckily I have supportive people around me. That coupled with a little self-discipline is helping me continue learning and practicing.
How will your talk motivate the attendees and one lesson they will carry from the conference?
Lavanya: In the talk, I hope to convey how clean test automation code can help readability and maintainability. I would like to show how we can identify not-so-clean code and then refactor step by step to make it better.
I hope that the attendees will have something to take back irrespective of whether they are new to test automation or highly experienced at test automation and have faced maintainability issues with their codebase.
You have worked in different contexts in your career, how has each experience shaped you as a professional?
Lavanya I have worn different hats – that of a QA, Test Automation Engineer, Software Developer, etc. in my career. I believe doing these different roles (especially early on in my career) helped me gain a wider knowledge of various areas in software development and delivery.
There is always a lot to learn irrespective of what role you play and you can always use those learnings in other areas as you move ahead in your professional life.
You have a gift for writing. Tell us more about your writing skills?
Lavanya I do enjoy writing even though I do not publicly post articles very often.
It helps me structure my thoughts and attain clarity.
I also like conveying my ideas in the form of short fictional stories so that they are more relatable to the readers. Some articles I have published in the past are here on this blog: https://bitweft.com/
We thank Lavanya for her time and energy to do this amazing interview. Stay tuned to hear from more Speakers. Register to Tribal Qonf happening 27-28 June 2020 here.
