|
CIPS Connections
8/14/2003
12:47:49 PM
Questions and Answers with a
QA Manager
Interview by Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P.
This week, Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P., has an
exclusive interview with Jennifer Butcher, QA Manager of Integration
Products, for Pivotal Corporation.
Q: With your busy schedule, I appreciate you taking the time to do this
interview. Thank you for sharing your insights with the audience.
A: It is my pleasure to have the opportunity of speaking with you today,
Stephen.
Q: Jennifer, what attracted you to Pivotal and how did you get to your
current position? What challenges did you need to overcome?
A: Prior to joining Pivotal, I had just completed an intensive IT
certification program at Capilano College. I chose
the program as it was a highly recommended program targeted at mature
students with business experience seeking a career change and entry into the
exciting and challenging world of Information Technology (IT). Upon
completion of the program, I was particularly wanting
to join a growing and dynamic organization which offered a lot of potential
opportunities for career growth and training with the firm. Pivotal was a
smaller (but by no means small) company that was already making a name for
itself within the mid-enterprise market as a leading provider of CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) software solutions. I started as a Quality
Assurance Specialist, testing the integrity of the product prior to its
release, and within just four months of joining the organization,
I was promoted to Technical Lead for Third-Party Integration Products. Pivotal’s willingness to promote me so quickly to
Technical Lead, despite my lack of previous industry experience, was highly
rewarding and solidified the rightness of my decision to join Pivotal as a
company of opportunities. And my experience with Pivotal since then has only
reinforced this belief. Over the course of the last 3 years at Pivotal, I
have also been promoted to Team Lead, and now hold the position of Quality
Assurance Manager, Integrated Products, a role in
which I manage a group of Team Leads, Technical Leads and Quality Assurance
Specialists and deal with project teams dispersed throughout North America
and Internationally.
Q: You’re a principal architect behind QA--Integration Products. Can you
provide useful pointers and best-practices to our audience from your
experiences in this area?
A: One of the biggest keys in building a great product, and testing that
product effectively, is understanding your target
market. Knowing the ins and outs of your customers’ business needs and
practices will allow you to ensure that you are designing a product which
meets – and more importantly – exceeds their expectations. This should be the
goal of any software solution, and it is important for not only designers but
also testers of the software to keep in mind what the clients’ needs are and
how the software is likely to be used. It is nice to build a product that you
think is great, but the bottom line is that if the customer doesn’t have a
use for it, you’ve failed to produce great software.
Q: Where do you see your area evolving in the future and how will you direct
these changes?
A: The trend for software development as well as for many different streams
of business, seems to be towards international and
global corporate strategies. Advances in communication with the Internet and
other Web-based technologies, have removed or greatly decreased the previous
obstacles to global communication and collaboration. I believe you will see
many companies embrace global collaboration and project teams will need to
read just their mindset and business practices to work in this new
environment which crosses time zones, languages and cultural differences and
where the workday occurs on a 24/7 basis for companies that span the globe.
Q: With regards to Pivotal itself as a company, are there any new
technologies businesses should be watching for?
A: Pivotal is always looking to expand on its already vast product offering,
by offering customers solutions that anticipate their needs. Pivotal has
already brought to market a number of industry vertical solutions which are
customized for specific segments of the market. These solutions allow
businesses to start with a solution which is already tailored to their
specific industry workflow and as consequently, mean a much short, and therefore,
less costly, implementation period for our customers.
Q: What 10 tips can you provide to others that helped you in your path to
success? What would you do different looking back in hindsight?
A: The best tip I can give to someone wishing to start a career in the IT
field is to pick a specialization within the field that you love and pursue
it with passion. There are so many different focuses you can choose in the IT
profession – from scripting to database or network administration, the sky is
the limit. Employers tend to look for those individuals who have expertise in
a specific area, rather than those with a broad knowledge that is not
extensive in any one particular area. Looking back, I wouldn’t change any of
the decisions I made. The only action I might change looking back is that I
wouldn’t have debated as much as I did about some of the decision I made. I
would just go for it now. Risks – if they are calculated risks – are a
necessary part of moving forward in the IT industry, and you learn so much by
taking on new challenges.
Q: What do you see on the horizon that businesses and IT professionals “must”
be aware of to be competitive?
A: Businesses as well as IT professionals must never become complacent. The
market is always changing, and although you may be offering a product or
skilled in a technology that is revolutionary today, it quickly becomes
obsolete and replaced by the next latest technological innovation tomorrow.
So professionals must remain vigilant in keeping their skills updated with
continuous education and businesses must remain open to exploring and working
with new technologies in their solutions.
Q: What do you feel are the top ten the hottest topics of interest to both
businesses and IT professionals today and what will be the topics in two
years and in five years?
A: From a technical perspective, I think methodologies like UML will be the
hot ticket in the coming 1-2 years, as businesses and professionals try to
find a common language for communicating their needs and workflow practices.
There is always another “hot” technology looming on the horizon…. First it
was ASP, then XML, and tomorrow it will be something else. But the constant
focus will be the ability to understand a user’s workflow and translate that
workflow into a solution that works for them.
Q: Who/What do you think are the winners and losers in IT in next five years?
[This could be companies, technologies, …and so on.]
What advice would you give to enterprises in their adoption of technologies
in the next five years?
A: The winners in the field of IT will be determined in a lot less than 5
years from now. How companies choose to do business over the next 1-2 years,
will determine who is around in the next 5 years. Winning companies will be
those who embrace change and look at unconventional ways of doing business,
including global collaboration. Pivotal is one of those companies which is positioning itself well to be in this category of
winners, by thinking outside of conventional business practices and looking
at innovative ways to meet customers needs.
Q: If you were doing the interview, what four interview questions would you
ask of someone in your position and what would be your answers?
A: I don’t know about 4 questions, but here are 2 that I always ask. The
first allows me to understand whether the person is a fit for the role they
will be required to take on (do they have the mindset required for QA which
involves looking for defects and requires thinking beyond the functional
specifications and thinking outside the box). The second question allows me
to determine what path the person is likely to take in their career and with
the organization, which can be helpful in determining whether they will stay
with the organization for some duration or are looking for more of a stepping
stone to another, difference career focus:
Q1: Why are you seeking a job in Quality Assurance and what appeals to you
the most about working as part of a Quality Assurance team?
A1: I enjoy working as part of the Quality Assurance team because I have the
opportunity of using my analytical abilities and problem solving skills to
assess the defects in the product and how they can best be resolved. I also
enjoy working as part of a team and the rewards of working together to produce
a great result – a great product.
Q2: What attracted you about Pivotal as a potential employer and where do you
see yourself going within the organization?
A2: I became interested in joining Pivotal because I was looking for a
growing and dynamic firm which offered me the opportunity to grow my career
and increase my technical knowledge and expertise. I see myself continuing in
my current role, gaining further project management experience through the
continuing expansion of my role in international project management.
Q: It’s a blank slate, what added comments would you like to give?
A: For anyone who has the goal of entering the IT market, I offer these words
of encouragement. If you have a dream, pursue it and do not let anyone deter
you from your vision. The marketplace is very competitive, especially after
the economic set backs of September 11th and the drop in investors’
confidence with the Dot Com market disappointments. But for those who are
determined and persevere, there are rewarding and challenging jobs to be had.
And a career in IT is one of the most stimulating and rewarding careers you
can have it you chose.
Jennifer, thank you for this most informative interview.
|
|
