Interview with Venkat

Venkatasubramaniam (Venkat) Ramakrishnan

Twitter: @flyvenkat

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/venkatramakrishnan/

Interview

Where are you in your testing journey?

After almost 3 decades, I am at a place where I experience testing as a curiosity to learn. As someone said, information technology, or for that matter, any knowledge domain in this universe, is not about what you know, but what you don’t know. When you keep exploring what you don’t know, it keeps you passionate, fresh, and introduces you to new horizons.Currently I am most passionate about ‘Test Orchestration’, a method of human-led exploration, assisted by automation. I also have plans to explore Artificial Intelligence in Testing (not just Machine Learning) in detail.

The best bug you have ever found?

I was testing a Line Card in a big router (that routes packets in the Internet). The team which had tested the Line Card had ignored testing the basic features in that card, and had just did cursory checks. When the card came to our team for testing (our team added some more additional features on top of the other team’s features), I did a thorough testing, which exposed so many defects. It created a furor, and our management asked the other team’s management to test the card again, and the other team had to hire 4 or 5 engineers to get that done. This got me a lot of praise in my team and was one of the factors to my promotion to a senior position.

Advice you would give to Testers?

Be very curious on everything around you, not just the software that you test. Learn many things that are out of your comfort zones - how things work, psychology, functioning of human brain, human body, communication systems, extra-sensory perceptions, etc. We human race are capable of doing many things which we stretch, and take our race to the next level of evolution. Testing is one of the great opportunities and path to do that!

What does winning mean to you?

To win hearts on the way. I believe in nurturing human beings, and building communities. I work with several communities around the world, and help them build solutions for their local problems. If they succeed, that’s my win!