Post COVID-19 leadership has made a paradigm shift. Every business is witnessing a change in their organizations’ DNA. For how long – perhaps indefinitely. The pandemic has changed the way we worked in our contained and confined offices. But it’s time to seize it as an opportunity to improve and reposition the organization for the future instead of worrying about decades-old brick-and-mortar office setups.

According to a recent survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, 2 out of 3 employers say maintaining employee morale during the pandemic has been a challenge, particularly companies with 500 employees or more. So, companies must shift focus to employee morale and corporate culture in the recovery phase of the crisis. (Geller, 2020)

Simultaneously, resilient leadership promotes his, her, their, etc. excellent followership, nurtured, and catalyzed by building deeper trust. These resilient leaders should begin by anticipating what success looks like at the end of recovery, how their businesses will prosper in the long term, and then guide their teams to develop an outcomes-based set of remote working. (Renjen 2020)

Remote/Mobile Working is Here to Stay

PwC’s June survey of US executives and office workers shows that a permanent flexible workweek has broad support. Most office workers i.e., a vast 83%, want to work from home at least one day a week, and half of the employers expect that most of their workers will do so long after COVID-19 is not a concern. (PvC. 2020)

The facts are employees will never go back to things “the way they used to be”. To prevent future health crises, COVID-19 will dictate what office spaces will look like going forward. Fewer people will congregate in small rooms, teams may work rotating shifts, and remote workers will need accountability. Most importantly, we need to identify that humans need connection and feedback. Especially those in a production or service role.

Here are a few crucial steps, businesses can take to navigate through the most difficult times.

Design A Flexible Strategic Plan

Post COVID-19 leadership needs to realize that the recovery won’t be static. There is no final day to knowing when all of this will be over, and we can get back to what we once called ‘normal.’ Business leaders need to define different destinations in anticipation of the severity and impact of any natural or human-made crisis. With that, working backward will help them in creating a more fluid, yet aggressive plan.

Leading research and advisory company, Gartner sees the post-pandemic planning in three phases. Each phase’s duration will vary by the country, industry, and enterprise and even by business unit, product, or service. The phases define what’s happening at each of these stages: respond, recover, and renew.

Streamline Expectations Using the Right Communications Tools

Just because most employees are working-from-home, don’t have unrealistic expectations from them to respond to every email and chat instantaneously. Understand their work and personal time the same way you did when they were working in your office – they will have their lunch, take breaks and sometimes work on other projects without the constant distraction of being on video calls or checking emails.

Leadership roles are changed, and managers need to direct teams by setting metrics and expectations for the new normal. Direct meetings and collaboration and determine how employees should collaborate on projects. For each of these areas, define the basic routines and guidelines and tools that collectively describe your company’s new ways of working and consider changes to individual performance metrics. (PwC, 2020)

It would help to provide your teams with the collaboration tools and rights to access to the data they need to work remotely effectively. However, it’s also essential to monitor and close the security and control gaps in your remote work setup.

Work collaboration apps like Slack, Trello and Asana were built for remote work scenarios with teams. Research a few of them and find one that works. These software applications were made to drown out the white noise that comes with email, text messaging and social media.

Leverage Technology Transformation

The best discoveries happen in times of crisis or need. Technology has been the common denominator for most organizations’ resilience amid the crisis. It has helped drive many cultural shifts – such as people working from home and connecting with colleagues via video-conferencing platforms and collaboration tools. It is one reason why business owners can find them in a unique position to challenge predetermined concepts of what is possible, rendering many traditional ideas irrelevant. (Baldwin, 2020)

Encourage new ways of technology-driven work to drive efficiencies and productivity. It’s also a farsighted approach to invest in research and development innovation hubs. Grow the organization’s ecosystem to include alliances with innovative companies, entrepreneurs, and start-ups. Automate using technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning now to be future-ready. (Palanee, 2020)

Capitalize New Cultural and Behavior Patterns

Even in business to business environments, we are finding those who turned quickly to technology and collaboration are winning. How we find human resources, source raw materials, transport finished goods is learning from collaboration. What used to be company confidential is now open source bent on being shared. The old business model is gone and replaced with at our fingertip information created to solve problems. Be agile in your sourcing and cross old lines drawn that kept your company or team from real progress.

Optimize the behavioral and cultural shifts happening now and use omnichannel business models to bring you success in places you’ve never thought of before. Stay open-minded and win.

What is Next?

We are all in the same place and it is unpleasant because it is intrusive and has caused upheaval in our nation, schools, families – everything we were comfortable with.  We can gnash our teeth or go looking for resources to overcome the beast that COVID-19 became. A big part of it is up to us as individuals. As leaders in the new normal, we must be changemakers and have to be servant leaders. Are you ready for the future of work?

Explore with us the ways to make change happen. We have amazing humans behind technology that understand post COVID-19 leadership opportunities and we can help you make organizational changes that stakeholders will see real return on. Contact TechQuarry: https://www.techhumanit.com/contact-us/

Work Cited

Geller, Jen, and Riley DeLeon. “How Post-pandemic Office Spaces Could Change Corporate Culture.” CNBC. N.p., 18 May 2020. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/18/how-post-pandemic-office-spaces-could-change-corporate-culture.

Renjen, Punit. “Deloitte BrandVoice: The Essence Of Resilient Leadership: Business Recovery From COVID-19.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 07 May 2020. https://www.forbes.com/sites/deloitte/2020/05/07/the-essence-of-resilient-leadership-business-recovery-from-covid-19.

Baldwin, Andy. “How to Plan Your Company’s Future during the COVID-19 Crisis.” World Economic Forum. 25 Apr. 2020. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/how-to-plan-company-future-during-pandemic.

Palanee, Sugan D. “How to Leverage Technology Transformation Opportunities Post-COVID-19.” EY. EY, 11 May 2020. https://www.ey.com/en_om/consulting/how-to-leverage-technology-transformation-opportunities-post-covid-19.

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What’s the ‘New Normal’ in the Future of Work?

The future of work looks to have changed not by happenstance. Who would have thought that it would take a pandemic and not advanced technology to change our lives and how we work? With the rest of the world, we watched in disbelief as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold early in 2020 and changed life as we knew it. Among the most radical changes was the transition from in-office to remote working. The sudden increase in work-from-home created a cause for global discussion regarding best practices for bringing workforce teams together from multiple locations.

So, what is the future of work? What changes could be in store for the workplace, the workforce, and the nature of work itself? It is time to explore technologies like automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence to shape how we work, where we work, and how humans fit into that landscape.

Remote Working – Be Careful What You Wish For!

Pre-COVID19, many working Americans yearned for a way to work remotely and stop the daily drudgery of the work commute. Sitting in traffic is no one’s idea of a productive way to spend an hour or two each day. According to a new MIT report, 34 percent of Americans who previously commuted to work, reported that they were working from home by the first week of April 2020, due to the coronavirus (Molla, 2020).

Image Source – SHRM

While a lot of businesses have already started adapting to remote work pre-pandemic, for others, it’s still a new concept with workers having to navigate while adhering to social distancing measures. This transition puts a spotlight on how remote work and collaboration will be the future of business continuity. And in the short-term, businesses can reduce operating costs by permitting workers to work from home, which is less painful than layoffs.

Business leaders are also adjusting to new ways of leading teams. To help create best practices, companies are making the transition to technological change by providing training and guidelines and instruction for working remotely. For some, it’s a leap. Workers will need new skillsets on tracking productivity, interacting with supervisors and managers and staying engaged and accountable.

Where Are You in Your Digital Transformation?

Since 2018, we have witnessed great change in the speed and scale of technological advances, bringing bigger and bolder shifts in shorter windows of time (Vollina et al.,2020).

The COVID19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity for organizations to integrate AI and automation into automatable tasks and erase the belief that humans and machines are on parallel paths.  We find author’s like George Danner, an AI and automation pioneer, giving stakeholders practical and vital precedent on what is to come in his book, “The Executive’s How-to-Guide to Automation”, Palgrave Macmillan. According to Danner, “Automation is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.” (Danner,2019). The book is a primer on what leadership should be doing now to embrace the tsunami of AI that is approaching.

The necessity of working from home brought on by the pandemic created a panicked spend on technology like video conferencing subscriptions as well as equipment with cameras and video capabilities and increased internet bandwidth to handle the uptick in broadband demand.

Social Distancing’s Effect on Teams

Big or small, businesses are still trying to figure out the best way to maintain team communication, morale, and motivation. Now that we have experienced distance learning and remote team collaboration – it is important to find ways to share detailed information and creativity from notes and presentations to whiteboarding. The benefits of going digital gives us an opportunity to record meetings for archiving important information and to share with others who were absent for the original collaboration to add their comments and thoughts. Moving to digital meetings allows a broader audience to take part in productivity in a new way of thinking which we believe will encourage more innovation.

Be Prepared to Return to the Office, Differently!

The thought of returning to offices can feel like a fresh start. Some of us are essential employees and are required to return, but not everyone will. Although it’s a bit early for America’s workforce to know the exact timeline, companies must start preparing for the return of employees to the physical workplace. The pandemic has opened the floor for business leaders to do three things: prepare to return to work, understand and leverage the advancements they enacted during the crisis, and chart a new path forward.

Self-isolation and quarantining during the pandemic may have affected your employees’ mental health. HR teams should be aware and create a contingency plan for the potential effects, providing resources ready to help (Snook).

Companies should also consult and continue monitoring guidelines and recommendations issued by federal agencies and state and local municipalities. Here is the guidance published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which outlines critical considerations for planning and preparing workplaces for bringing back employees:

Implementing First Line of Preventive Measures: Educate employees on preventive measures to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19; support good hygiene practices, and provide employees, customers, and workplace visitors with a designated area to wash or sanitize their hands. Also, establish policies and practices for social distancing and perform routine environmental cleaning and disinfection.

Implementing Workplace Controls: Increase ventilation rates in the workplace; install high-efficiency air filters; establish policies to limit the number of employees and visitors in the workplace at any given time; reconfigure office spaces to maintain proper social distancing; set up barriers, such as partitions, between workspaces; and provide personal protective equipment (e.g., masks, gloves, and protective eyewear) and training and education on the proper use of such protective wear.

Prompt Identification and Isolation of Employees Suspected of COVID-19: Conduct health/body temperature screenings as a mandatory condition to enter the workplace; encourage employees to self-monitor for signs and symptoms of COVID-19, and develop policies and procedures for employees to report when they are sick or experiencing symptoms of COVID-19 (Cannon et al., 2020).

In the longer term, experts predict that society’s heightened awareness of contagious diseases could usher in a new type of office – one that has elements in common with a hospital. Post pandemic office spaces can have sanitizing booths, automated operations, distant seats, digital signs, etc. (Mudditt,2020).

Image source – Unispace

Build A Sustainable Post-COVID Future

If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s about overcoming leaping change and challenges. Each of us, including businesses and government, needs to take ownership of the future of work. Health and safety now rank along with purpose, potential, perspective, profits and possibility for our future.

Survival of the fittest is a harsh reminder of what happens to businesses that don’t create new roadmaps and paths towards the future. Organizations must return to a post-COVID world, adapting and changing.  Building a sustainable version of the new human work model includes social distancing as a strategy rather than a requirement.

About TechQuarry

We are Human-Centric Tech Amplification

Our innovative team of thought leaders brings a holistic and balanced approach to IT and the deep insight needed to enable your people to capitalize in our world of continuous technological advancement.

We’ll help you create a positive, frictionless, technology-savvy taskforce who step-ups in times of need. Visit our website https://www.techhumanit.com/tech-solutions/ to see how we implement digital technology success and sustainability. People first.

Javier Guerra

Javier Guerra is a co-founder of TechQuarry®, a people-centric business transformation consultancy and technology staff-augmentation service provider focused on helping companies evolve in the new age of IT. He applies human-behavioral scientific methods and employs seasoned experts to help organizations transform through technology innovation, optimization, talent attraction, and retention.You can find him here on LinkedIn

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Works Cited

Cannon, John, et al. “Key Considerations in Designing a Return to Work Plan.” Shearman & Sterling, 8 May 2020, www.shearman.com/perspectives/2020/04/key-considerations-in-designing-a-return-to-work-plan-covid-19.

Danner, George. “The Executive’s How-to-Guide to Automation.” Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Molla, Rani. “This Is the End of the Office as We Know It.” Vox, Vox, 14 Apr. 2020, www.vox.com/recode/2020/4/14/21211789/coronavirus-office-space-work-from-home-design-architecture-real-estate.

Mudditt, J. “How Offices Will Change after Coronavirus.” BBC Worklife, BBC, 15 May 2020, www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200514-how-the-post-pandemic-office-will-change.

Snook, A. “Key Considerations in Designing a Return to Work Plan.” Shearman & Sterling, 8 May 2020, www.shearman.com/perspectives/2020/04/key-considerations-in-designing-a-return-to-work-plan-covid-19.

Vollina, E., et al. “Returning to Work in the Future of Work.” Deloitte Insights, 15 May 2020, www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2020/covid-19-and-the-future-of-work.html.

Zeidner, Rita. “Coronavirus Makes Work from Home the New Normal.” SHRM, SHRM, 23 Mar. 2020, www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/all-things-work/pages/remote-work-has-become-the-new-normal.aspx.

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Show Summary

Saturday, July 14, episode 94 of Cyber Talk Radio hit the air on 1200 WOAI and iHeartRadio streaming. I was joined by Javier Guerra and Bethany Reese of Tech Quarry to discuss the importance of a holistic approach to IT consulting and solutions.

We start off the first segment discussing the creation of Tech Quarry and Holistic IT solutions. Javier was training to be a physician to help people, but then he stumbled into the medical devices industry, which peaked his interest in meaningful solutions to people’s problems. He then created the Tech Quarry ecosystem to help people and businesses. Javier views technology as a tool that can either amplify negatives or positives, depending on the approach. How does Tech Quarry handle customers who only want a problem solved a very specific way (meaning that they’ve already self-diagnosed)? Through understanding and trust, looking for where problems really exist and then identifying how to treat the problem. Similar to a medical approach, they make sure to acknowledge the pain and assure to fix it, but not necessarily in the way clients believe it should be fixed. What’s different now in this industry? Technology tools for communications and company relationships. Slack, Facebook, Twitter and more increase the rate of change of information and can lead to information overload. Generally, the underlying problem is always a human aspect — that’s why it’s important to take a holistic approach. It’s also bringing people closer together with purpose and collaboration.

After the break, we look into the specifics of Tech Quarry’s holistic approach. It means getting to the root cause of a problem instead of treating superficial symptoms. Tech Quarry looks at teams as a whole and sees if people are taking measures that are helping them reach their goals — tracking progress is important to see the results of those measures. For example, an organization with multiple departments purchases an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that doesn’t take into account the individuals involved, who then become frustrated and add to a negative work culture. Tech Quarry’s job would be to make sure that the ERP is the right fit for the organization and that there aren’t better solutions before making a change. Another important aspect of their job is to make sure that employees are comfortable with technologies and the way they’re implemented. It’s also vital to acknowledge individual’s unique institutional knowledge in their given industry as not to make them feel obsolete as new technologies are introduced — make them feel valuable. When people feel appreciated, they are much more willing to contribute. Understand the end goal and the big picture. Instead of giving into the fear of new technology, make sure that employees know that its purpose is to make their job more efficient.

To listen to the episode replay, go here or watch below.**

Looking for more? The best of the best, perhaps? Here’s a best of Cyber Talk Radio 2017.

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According to Verywell, personality testing refers to techniques that are used to accurately and consistently measure one’s personality. These can be helpful in determining a candidate’s potential fit with your organization, the most crucial question of the interview process. While we do understand the importance of this type of evaluation, there are some things that a hiring manager should look out for when using them.

What Should a Hiring Manager Look Out For?

One of the major pitfalls of utilizing personality tests in interviews is assuming that the ideal candidate only fits a specific mold and rejecting those who don’t match it. While there are certain red flags that can be found in the testing, a hiring manager should not make the mistake of counting out a candidate that doesn’t fit inside their idea of a “perfect personality”. The important thing to remember is to use these as just one tool in deciphering a candidate’s fit, rather than a full deciding factor.

Where Can You Find One?

There are a ton of them out there available for free, if you want to give them a try. One that is fairly accurate is www.16personalities.com, which features a full account of the taker’s habits and tendencies associated with their match. In addition to the Myers-Briggs personality test, there are plenty of tests available through 3^rd party services to ensure more security in the testing process.

Personality testing can be used as a telling portion of your pre-hire assessment process. You should also remember that if the test requires a significant portion of time, you may want to wait until later in the interview process to require it so that you don’t scare off a candidate too early. Once implemented, you may find that your HR department has an easier time evaluating your candidates on a much deeper level, something that any hiring manager can get behind.

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The “company man” refers to the traditional worker; one who gets their degree, finds a good job and continues to work there 20, 30, or 40 years. According to the Multiple Generations @ Work survey, 91% of Millennials expect to stay at a job for less than three years.

Why Are They Leaving?

While there are numerous causes to this effect, it can generally be summarized into three aspects:

1. Rapid Career Advancement

When an employee stays in a company, they are confined to the promotional track that is specific to that company. This means that if there aren’t quick advancement opportunities within their employer, they will seek them from elsewhere.

2. Lack of Job Fulfillment

As many of you know, the first 90 days of a new job are typically the most exciting as it takes about that long to become acclimated to the new environment. From then, they are either continually challenged with new opportunities or they begin to become complacent with their role. Job hopping can fill the void of fulfillment that they may not be receiving at a certain company.

3. Leaving on Their Own Terms

In the case of downturn in an organization employees want to be prepared to jump ship to protect themselves before they are laid off. While this scenario may not be applicable to most organizations, it provides some insight to the new frame of mind taking place.

What are Some Proactive Solutions?

1. Assure Them of Their Security

In the case of the final aspect of job hoppers, you want to make a point that their job is not in jeopardy. This easing of their mind can decrease their desire to jump ship and stick with a stable career. Listen to them and if they have concerns, take them very seriously.

2. Offer Flexibility in Their Schedule

For some, offering flex options for work such as half on-site, half remote work can boost their desire to stay with your organization. Per the “Multiple Generations @ Work” survey, workplace flexibility won over both compensation and career advancement, showing the importance of this offering. If possible, you can adjust your policies to fit this scheduling (be judicious with who you offer it to, though) and watch your turnover drop!

3. Prepare for It

Now that you are aware of the job-hopping situation among the workplace, you can prepare your business model for it. Whether this includes having alternative candidate choices or the utilization of a 3^rd party organization to help fill the gaps, you can be ready when an employee leaves for another opportunity.

These are just a few tips to add to your HR department’s arsenal of retaining employees. While the job-hopping nature of today’s workforce may make maintaining your staff more complex, awareness of the situation will arm you with the knowledge to mitigate the issues. Should you need help with filling a position due to someone job-hopping on you, you can contact us at connect@techquarry.com to help fill those positions with the premier, technology talent.

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7 Top Interview Questions for IT

1. How do you keep your relevant skills up-to-date? This question will evaluate the scope of their knowledge on a subject and allow you to create a time frame of their use of applicable talents.
2. What challenges would you foresee for yourself with this position, if you were hired? While allowing insight into their concerns with the role, this also serves the secondary purpose of seeing how much research they have committed to in preparation for this interview.
3. What were some of your favorite and least favorite aspects about your previous role? We would attempt to use this question in a purposefully vague manner since it can uncover potential issues in their fit to your organization (even the ones that aren’t about the role itself!).
4. Explain how you would react to this situation: You have found a bug in our software that no one else had found during their own testing, what would you do next? Primarily, this question serves the purpose of insight into their motives (tell a co-worker or go straight to the boss?) but the bonus of their reaction to peculiar situation such as this makes this a strong tool in your interview arsenal.
5. What technology products/languages are you most passionate about and why? Asking about their favorite technologies (hopefully, they are included in the job description) as well as what they could offer for you outside of the position’s relevant technology.
6. What are some of the hot trends in the IT industry and how/do they affect you? This will provide knowledge of the industry and a chance to understand where their head is at concerning their career with the second part of the question.
7. What project are you most proud of and what was your individual contribution to said project? This questions also grants a plethora of hiring information as it serves several purposes. First, it allows for the most insightful technical evaluation; past performance. Second, it showcases their strengths by which they are most proud of and their weaknesses by what aspects were done by other colleagues. Finally, it can help you assess their credibility, as you may be able to tell what they did and did not do for a project by their explanation of the tasks necessary to complete it.

While these top interview questions for IT can assist you in evaluating a candidate, we believe that you should take your time in assessing one’s fit with your organization. This can be accomplished by asking questions that are tailored specifically to your company or to the position itself. For more help with your interview process, contact us at connect@techquarry.com to receive some top-tier information on evaluating potential employees.

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Big Data is a term used to describe large, complex data sets that are so massive that they cannot be processed, organized, and utilized through traditional data processing methods.

Data can be any type of information that is generated through an organization’s business practices. For example, your data include anything from demographics of your customers to the times in which any customer made a purchase, dependent upon the size and nature of your organization. Any data set that is too large to be processed by your own capabilities qualifies as big data.

Who Uses it?

Unbeknownst to many smaller companies due to misconceptions about big data, it can be valuable to any size organization and applicable to businesses of any industry.  While its practices are generally seen as solely applicable for large enterprises, that simply is not true. Any organization that generates a fair amount of data could benefit from big data analytics, as it offers insights to trends that couldn’t be spotted otherwise.

The final misconception, that big data is solely useful to your IT department, is hurting businesses all around the world. This form of data can be utilized for any business process, not just the more technical ones. This porous idea is thankfully becoming less popular and companies are reaping the benefits in all areas of their company.

How to Harness the Full Power of Big Data

There are several different options available for you to begin utilizing big data analytics in your business practices:

First, consider what problems are arising in your business that could be mitigated by using more data. In addition to this, look at the gaps in your data where further analysis would best suit your needs. This will help you identify where you could use big data the most, therefore laying out what/where work needs to be done.

Next, create a set of KPIs (key performance indicators) that will allow you to properly assess if your analytics endeavors are successful.

After your problems are identified and criteria are created, you will probably need someone who specializes in big data analytics. This can be done through a direct hire or through staff augmentation, dependent upon the timeline of your needs.

Big data analytics are currently transforming the way that the world does business. By offering a more holistic view of your company’s data, you will be able to analyze new trends and discrepancies that could otherwise not be found. Once you have identified the areas that need to be expanded upon, you may then be able to take steps towards improving these processes and by extension, your organization as a whole.

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The Association for Talent Development has defined the IT skills gap as the “significant gap between an organization’s current talent capabilities and the skills it needs to grow or remain competitive”.The top talent that we speak of refers to the candidates that feature a wide array of relevant skills and a large amount of experience to compliment them.

Per The Wall Street Journal, c-level executives are growing increasingly concerned with this gap (73% say it is a “key concern”) and for good reason. The inability to find premier IT talent has the possibility of crippling an organization through its technological functions.

Why Is There a Gap?

1. Technology Changes Rapidly

Coding languages, software updates, and common practices in the IT industry are constantly changing. This requires professionals in this field to continually grow their knowledge base to keep up with the competition. This can be difficult to do while trying to hold down the career that they are currently at or searching for one, causing some of the discrepancies we see today.

2. Employers Requiring Too Much Experience

Although most hiring managers will desire a fair amount of experience, some may be overstating the amount necessary to complete a role’s duties. This leads to the skills gap being overstated by requiring too much experience in an actual workplace. We will touch on this more later in the post.

3. Lack of Desire for STEM Majors

This is a systemic issue that is affecting several industries across the United States. Our youth simply aren’t as interested in these crucial industries anymore, severely narrowing the talent pool that businesses must work through.

How Can You Bridge the Gap?

1. Competitive compensation, meaning more than just salary.

While a high salary will attract almost anyone, retaining that individual will require them to be intellectually-stimulated by their work environment. This can be attained through exposing them to new, innovative technologies or growth of their skill set that they may not find at other positions.

2. Give the rookie a chance

Although most companies would like someone with a perfect skill set and experience to boot, the truth is that everyone else does too. Sometimes, and in a very judicious manner, you may want to try taking a chance on a candidate that may not have the exact amount of experience desired. The idea behind this strategy is that if they have the skill set and training, these “diamonds in the rough” can be polished into the perfect, loyal fit to your business.

The IT skills gap should not affect your business processes when there are several options available to mitigate the effects of it. If you’re trying to fill a position, contact us at connect@techquarry.com and we can gladly assist you in finding premier talent!

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Automated testing involves the use of automated tests or testing scripts utilizing tools and technology that would allow the execution of such tests. This process can be very daunting and tedious for a quality assurance team as due to the repetitive use of different experiments to work out the kinks of a new release. Testing automation is generally applicable to any business that utilizes software to release new products, which can add benefits of all forms to your business processes.

Why Incorporate Automation?

Automation would allow for a development team to free up their valuable time that they would usually spend executing tests and trials. This would allow them to have greater flexibility to focus on applying their technical strengths to your business model. In addition to this, automation can increase the speed and productivity of a testing process as it can process these tests at a much faster pace while minimizing the chances of human error. When used judiciously, testing automation can rapidly progress your entire development process through these benefits.

How You Can Start an Automation Process

Automation does not have to be used during an entire development cycle. It is simply a tool in your arsenal to speed your entire release or implementation. If you feel uncomfortable with the idea of fully automating your QA testing process, start small by executing them at an earlier stage of the development or in a non-vital process setting. That way, if there are any unforeseen errors, you will have time to mitigate them quickly without severely effecting the release time of your newest product. This type of software requires a solid amount of time for designing and testing, so it is up to you to balance the ROI of this endeavor to fit your needs. Should you need help implementing QA automated testing software, Tech Quarry has a proprietary technology, created by an automated testing guru to help. Contact us at connect@techquarry.com speed your quality assurance testing today!

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