Interview with Martin Gijsen

By Jørgen Austvik and Tor Stålhane

Martin Gijsen, now an independent testing consultant, got involved in test automation when his colleague Hans Buwalda gave a presentation on the topic at a company meeting. He found it interesting and has enjoyed supporting testers with tools for automation for over ten years.

As a software engineer, he finds it stimulating to deal with testers, mainly because they help him see things in a different way. He likes learning new things – from testers, from software engineers, from DBAs, and from business analysts. This makes him a better consultant, day by day. It is unfortunate however, that testing as a profession is still not commonly appreciated as much as are other roles in IT.

When it comes to automated testing, Martin would like all testers to understand that automated testing does not have to be difficult, require a “programming or die” attitude due to the maintenance effort. Domain Specific Test Languages (DSTLs) make it easy to avoid all of this, and there are plenty of free tools available.

Martins favourite test tool is the one he has developed himself. He started with a generic test engine, and has since then added support for approaches based on DSTLs. It can be hooked up to all sorts of existing test tools – e.g. Selenium – to test all types of systems with all types of interfaces (web app, web service, GUI, etc.).

His strongest dislike is for the record & playback approach, probably the least effective testing approach, even though it is still used a lot. Most of the tools that have a record button can also be used without it, but that is not always made clear to the testing professionals. He likes to compare the record button to the ejection seat in aircraft: There are situations where you should use it, but only very few.

Martin will hold both a presentation at the conference, and arrange a workshop afterwards. The presentation is for everybody that is interested in effective test automation, while the workshop on Wednesday goes more into detail on how to do test automation.

The presentation will give a comparison of approaches and tools, and highlight some factors that influence the probability of success for automated testing. This is useful when considering the approach and tooling you are using right now or the approach and tooling to use on your next project.