Speaking Engagements
Become a pro tester using fault injection
QA&TEST 2019 – AWARD WINNING TALK
In this award winning talk I shared the story of how testers can make a massive impact by becoming technical and understanding the underlying product’s technology.
Transforming with SAFe and importance of Test Leadership
Test Leadership Congress 2020
Shared our quality transformation journey, how we defined the role of test architect and key learnings during the process.
Transforming with SAFe and importance of Test Leadership
Agile Testing Days – USA [2021]
An upcoming talk on the role of test leadership in scaled agile.
Big data 101 & importance of automation
Automation Guild 2020
The talk was on an intro to big data, what a data pipeline is, a sample data pipeline, stages of tests you might have and how to add automation in there.
Why do we call it big data and how to test it
OnlineTestConf 2019
Talked about the evolution of big data, technologies used and how types of tests that happen within a big data project. A good introduction for testers interested to get into this field. [Talk recording]
Technological Excellence
Around the world with 80 testers
The short story of how ‘Technological Excellence’ became a value near and dear to me which changed my approach to software testing.
Continuous Testing practices in Scaled agile
Karachi Meetup 2019
Overview of how scaled agile embeds agility and DevOps practices, how a CI pipeline should like and the different tests at all stages across.
Round Table Expert
AutomationGuild 2018
Was part of a round table / expert panel to answer questions from the participants on challenges they face in test automation projects. Details in the linked article.
To be Technical or not to be, that is the question
PSQC 2018 Conference
The talk is about a story of a tester learning over his career why getting technical background of the product we are working on is important. It gives a good introduction to folks new to testing how their careers can evolve in testing.
How to automate Embedded, SaaS and ERP products
TestTalks Podcast
Discover how to automate embedded, SaaS and ERP systems, so prepare to learn some useful tips and best practices as we Test Talk with Ali Khalid, a test automation expert and enthusiast who has a ton of consulting experience working with all kinds of automation projects.
The Recall, Becoming technical and Averting disaster
Testing Guild Conference – 2018
The story shared is of a tester seeing this gap in a product’s testing and fill it by getting under the hood and finding ways to test most critical and unreachable areas of the product, which if left untested could have caused severe damage to the product and the company.
Automation framework design
Tester’s Meetup
In efforts to gather and organize the testing community in Lahore a couple of tester’s meetups have been organized this year. The few things I shared and learned from the event are up for the readers.
For my group I decided to moderate the discussion on ‘considerations in developing an automation framework’. Instead of a presentation on the topic, the event was organized more towards group discussions where everyone could participate. Following are the few main ideas discussed. Each topic is in itself is an extensive discussion, the very jist of all were talked about in the 40 minutes we had.
Automation framework design
Training Session
Test automation framework design training sessions in 2015, went over different aspects of developing an automation framework. While the overall program included training of multiple aspects using TestComplete as the automation tool, the framework development section was designed to be applicable to any tool. Main training contents included Why an automation framework is needed, Planning to develop your framework, Developing framework architecture, and Highly desirable framework characteristics.
Articles and Publications
7 lessons from debugging a test automation framework
TechBeacon
In this article I discuss 7 lessons learned from debugging a test automation framework while me and my team went through a weeks-long ordeal figuring out changes in latest browser / automation tool & AUT versions.
Fault Injection Testing for an IoT Device
StickyMinds
The article primarily talks about why being technical is important for testers. The fault injection testing technique is explained in terms of what it is and how it can be beneficial to exponentially increase your test coverage.
ERPs and Automation Test Data
TEST Magazine
The highly complex and integrated business logic of ERPs coupled with configurable work-flows makes ERP’s test data very difficult to manager. The article explains different methods of handling test data, some of which would work well for less complex applications
CI/CD Expert Roundup
SeaLights.io
Round table expert discussion from different thought leaders in the industry on CI/CD from a quality stand point. It was a nice experience and a great effort from the SeaLights team to bring together different opinions on the topic.
Create Parallel Automation Tests
TestProject.io
An article for TestProejct.io on how to start thinking about adding parallelization to your automation framework, an important piece for continuous integration.
IS Project Escalation: A Case Study of Off-shore Development
Published paper – Sage Journals
Almost every software development project exceeds it’s estimates. The published research paper investigates the reasons for software project’s escalation (projects going above budget and time) by studying a project on which I was leading the testing side, concluding the root cause was communication with key stakeholders.
Mentions
Top 43 Automation Engineers 2018
I was excited and humbled to read the name Ali Khalid in the top experts to follow in year 2018. After years of talking to Automation and performance testing professionals, Joe Colantonio came up with a list of automation experts to look our for next year (2018).