Digital Leaders Week: 3 lessons learned in software testing

At the end of June, Insoft's team travelled to London, where they attended the Digital Leaders Week. It was an invaluable opportunity to hear about new, exciting software solutions and trends that are driving many industries forward today. Taking an active role in the event, Insoft's business unit manager Dmitrij Nikolajev also shared his experience with other attendees by delivering a presentation on successful software testing.

During the session, Dmitrij highlighted some internal changes and policies that Insoft is using to create and maintain productive and consistent testing workflows. He stressed that, nowadays, many companies forget the magic of simplicity, jumping on the latest improvements at the cost of internal changes that have the potential to drive sustainable growth from within. „It's all about progress, AI and artificial neural networks. The future looks bright, but before we get to that, we must pave the road for automated, paper-free processes first. Simple solutions always win, but developing and implementing them is a big challenge. It's hard not to get carried away and only focus on things that make a real difference", he noted.

Addressing the leaders that attended the conference, Dmitrij focused on the role of leadership, inspiring business representatives to motivate and educate testing departments first and foremost. Firstly, he highlighted the importance of professional training. In relation to this statement, he shared his experience at Insoft, where testing teams are encouraged to continue their training and obtain international certifications to boost their performance and motivation.

Secondly, Insoft's business unit manager pointed out the influence of collaboration, once again leaning upon internal practices at Insoft. "We have a testing database that we're expanding with every new problem we face or tool we use. It's a powerful reference work that allows every team member to share their knowledge and find answers independently", noted Dmitrij.

The final aspect that he highlighted was process automation. According to Dmitrij, although it really is a hot topic today, efforts to implement it are scarce and often ineffective. He encouraged other businesses to focus on it more, claiming it's an investment that pays off later down the line. To illustrate that, he introduced an open source solution that Insoft created and is currently using to fast-track process automation initiatives. "Since it is open source software, this tool is available to everyone. It gives us an opportunity to share our best practices with others", claimed Dmitrij.

Reporting on digital progress at an international level, Dmitrij also noted that, in contrast with big countries (such as Germany or the UK), Lithuania is ready to accept big changes in a short amount of time. „Some other countries have made strong headway with digitalization projects, but today they're already outdated. Changes are necessary, but complex ruling structures don't accept them that easily. Lithuania is a small country and nation-wide systems are much easier to implement here", he said. Relying on his dynamic professional experience as a business unit manager, Dmitrij claimed that, in many ways, Lithuania is leading industry progress by example. It's especially evident with modern IT solutions that Insoft has been successfully developing and implementing since 2008.