A Tester's Journey in the World of Machine Learning
Machine learning (ML) has become the epicenter of software in today’s era. Tremendous efforts are put into developing ML-based systems. But what about ensuring the quality of such applications? What role can testers play in this context? Usually, testing takes a backseat here, and testers need help finding their role and the contributions they could make. The perception remains that “it’s machine learning; it cannot be tested.” But is this really the case? If not, how can we break this myth? How can testers make their space in the ML world? Join Shivani as she explores answers to such questions and many more by sharing her experience of testing ML-based applications without any prior experience. She’ll reflect on her motivation, challenges, learnings, and techniques to test such systems. Get to know how a tester's skill set, like product knowledge, attention to detail, thinking out of the box, and customer focus can be a game changer here. She’ll leave you with tips, tricks, and ideas on how to create an impact on quality in such projects.
Shivani Gaba is currently the Team Lead of Engineering at New Work SE in Germany. She’s an experienced speaker who has delivered sessions at various international conferences. She believes that knowledge sharing boosts up all engaged parties and increases their confidence. It was the summer of 2013 when Shivani and “testing” met each other first time, and have been best friends since then. Shivani has rich experience in the testing domain, with hands-on in all layers of software testing ranging from UI (frontend), API and backend, functional, non-functional, and machine learning (ML) mobile testing. ML remains her all-time favorite. As a certified scrum master, working in an agile manner is always her approach. She believes in the idea of spreading her findings about any “new fancy stuff” she learns. She has worked with multiple international teams and brings forward ideas for the whole team, contributing to quality. She’s always up for conversation over email, LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, or a beer table :)