Stumbled into Testing as a Developer

Wade Erickson (00:13):

Welcome everyone to another episode of Tech Leaders Unplugged. Today we're getting unplugged with Lettie Ar-Rahmaan, from IBM, and she's a DevOps automation go to market product, adoption, growth all kinds of stuff at IBM. So we're gonna get to hear all about her activities. And she's been there over 30 years. That's an amazing career to have all a prestigious company like IBM. So we're gonna talk a lot about DevOps. We're gonna talk about testing and, and how testing automation, DevOps, all of that kind of comes together into this mix of what we call DevOps that's been around for about 10 years now or so. So thank you so much Leddy for joining us today. And yeah, before we jump into the topic, just introduce yourself a little bit, a little bit about what you do at IBM, and then we'll jump into the topic.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (01:09):

Alright, wait, thank you very much. So, one of the things I want to do I'm, I love accessibility and working with, you know, accessibility testing. So I wanna give an introduction to the accessibility community for those who are on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. So I am a black female with locks with a brown background, and I have a black shirt, would have the IBM logo with our Pan-African logo on the left side of my shirt. And I have a tan background with a white I have a white little blanket, keeps me warm on the back of my chair, and over to my right shoulder, you will see an IBM just a little, just a little nod over on the other side there. So that's my introduction to the accessibility community to just to say hello to you all.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (02:00):

So I am, well Letta, a Rockman, actually, I go by Letti Leddy a Rockman. I am a 30, over 30 years I've been in IBMI started my career as a contractor, as an admin in Milford, Connecticut, for many who don't know. It starts in Milford Connecticut for several years. And then I moved on to to North Carolina and finished up my degree at North Carolina Central University. And started working at, before I finished that degree I worked at IBM again as another contractor through another contract agency. And through those two years those four years that I've worked, I was working basically as an admin support until I got my foot into the door in 1996. And then I've been at IBM since 19 January, since 1996. Other than that, I do, I, I still live. I live in North Carolina, so I migrated to the south.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (03:01):

And I, my career started actually in development coming into what we call the Insurance Technology Resource Center. And now I have climbed that ladder from developer to tester over into the DevOps automation where we have our as a product manager for tests. And now I, I am in the go to market areas to making sure that we're doing product skills, which is enablement making sure that our products are being adopted and there's growth with our with our business partners and our clients as well. Our products are the DevOps automation. We have five pillars of that automation. And that's plan it's plan, create, task accelerate. And the last one is is launch. So those are the areas that we are covering within our DevOps space.

Wade Erickson (04:02):

Great. Great introduction. So I'm excited to hear about all the stuff you're doing there with the DevOps in IBM and how a big company that's so, you know, well known for your technology how you all approach DevOps. You know, because we have open source tools and we have commercial tools, and it's a whole mixed bag out there of how people accomplish their DevOps. So the topic we have is stumbled into testing as a developer. How, how, that's kind of the opposite really, of how most people, you know, land into their IT space. Testing, at least in the US is often seen as the introductory Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> to the whole product development space. You, even if you have a college degree and been developing, you usually come in the door as a tester, get your feet wet, you know as a developer, I mean, as a tester. And then you start to get to progress into the developer seat, right?

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (04:57):

Right, right.

Wade Erickson (04:57):

You did it the opposite. It looks like

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (04:59):

I did. So,

Wade Erickson (05:00):

You know interesting to hear how that happened because you know, as a testing company, we have people their whole careers have been in testing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And there's people that absolutely love to test products. They're the investigators, they're the people that like to break stuff and, and see the response of, you know, trying to do the crazy stuff and Right. That's kind of an ex exciting thing and other people really wanna just build. So we need both, obviously. Very. Right. So tell me a little bit about the topic, how you choose, chose that being, it is a little bit different than how some people come into testing.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (05:36):

Well, one of the, yeah. Okay. So, wait, one of the things that happened is that I came to Charlotte in 1998, and I ended up in what we call the insurance insurance Resource Technology group. And it was a brand new organization within IBM. And they, they were looking for drum roll co ball developers, <laugh>,

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (06:05):

So I have a background in cobol act very, very much so co, COBOL and JCL. And and I also worked at a couple other companies using that COBOL skill. And so when I came through, came in 1998 came to Charlotte in 98. That's what they were looking for. So they needed developers. From there at that, at that point, we really weren't talking about testing or anything else from there but it was a few years later that we started migrating into what we call what are APIs today, but we call hub and adaptive work back then. And during that timeframe, they were looking for those who, who had the ability to do some testing. And of course, you know, I just volunteered and I say, okay so what do I need to do? Well, you just need to test this and test the parameters and make sure the requirements are there.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (07:03):

And I was like, oh, this is not too bad. It's just like reading requirements for development and just making sure everything works. And then, and then I started, oh, this is fun. And I started doing a little more development and got into, you know, Java and CC plus, and I was like, this is not for me. After we got to orient <laugh> all to that side of development, and then I ended up working on a project. So in my career, I've had well over 30 projects within IBM from, from that timeframe. And I've covered from one side of finance, one side of insurance, and, and I been all over the country. I had quite a few engagements on the, on the west coast from, from Seattle down. And all of those had started out with tests. So my first testing, real testing project was in Los Angeles, California.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (08:02):

I will stay out there for three weeks, and I would come home for two <laugh>. And, and at that time I was, I was taught how to do a little bit of middleware testing using mq. And from there I kept going with, with testing. So I realized that the middleware testing was, oh, this isn't too bad. I could still do some of development work. I can still configure, I could still do look at a few more things, peeking in the queues and getting things together, but also having the ability to trace where issues are coming, coming up. And so that's one of the, one of the areas that I fell, you know, I fell into and I stumbled into it because I really wasn't trying to stay as a, as a, as a tester. I was trying to go and move out and do some more development because I love to do website development and database development.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (09:02):

But when but when I started doing a little bit more, staying out there for about six months back and forth, I realized that I started to like this more because now I've said, oh, testing, talk test touches all areas of the, of the software delivery cycle, life cycle. Oh, so I can do database, I could do, now web is coming up. I was able to, oh, integration testing. Oh, I didn't know much about this. So that's how it all kind of started. And then from there I went from, from the seriously developing maybe about 5, 5, 5, 6 years later and strongly went into tests. So I did a lot of manual testing a lot of component testing. Then, then I started moving around in integration integration testing, and then of course you know, UI and UX testing as well.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (10:01):

And then from, from that point there I got into automation testing and it was the last seven years I came into automation testing. It's something I wanted to do since like 2010, but you can't go into automation testing without having some experience. And so <laugh>, so most of the time you didn't get the experience, but you start working and looking at what you can do. So one of my projects out in no, this is telling, where was I this time? Washington State. Of course, I can't tell you all the names of the clients, but I was out in Washington State and they were doing a new doing some automation and they needed a test lead. And, and they brought me in and they said, well, this is about using UFT. And I looked, I said, I don't know how to use UFT, and being very honest about it.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (10:57):

And they was like, don't worry, you can learn. And actually, and I did. I sat down with the client and we sat down with our development team that's offshore. This is an offshore development team. And I learned how to do some automation with UFT at that time. Then from there I started doing small projects with a little bit of rational functional tester, which is now DevOps test within our DevOps automation plat platform portfolio. And so I did a little there and then started working with some of the other rational tools at that time, which are now our DevOps tool from, from there. And I stayed in that, in that for maybe about a year and went back to testing, became a business business analyst for a few years, <laugh>. So I've kind of covered the gamut of being at IBM.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (11:57):

And then in about five years ago I got back into automation and started doing some more work with another company in, in in state of Michigan. And from there, then I moved on moved on and moved over to the DevOps automation team just a couple years ago. And so that has been, so it's taking all of the knowledge and all the skills and all the work that I've done with testing and brought it into DevOps and just to see it at a different level from beginning to end of the software delivery lifecycle. So that's a short journey,

Wade Erickson (12:40):

<Laugh> <laugh>. That's great. So so one thing I really appreciate is that the test automation was very, very important part of the implementation of DevOps. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I'm sure many much of our community knows that term. 'cause It's been around now a good, I don't know, 10, 12 years, I guess that term's been getting kicked around. But but yeah, I mean for folks that just come straight away at DevOps, they see it more the infrastructure side, the terraforming, all of the stuff about deploying, releasing. And sometimes the test automation piece is not given the priority that it absolutely has because Right. The last thing you wanna do is automate pushing bad code <laugh>.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (13:28):

Right? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.

Wade Erickson (13:31):

So, so so tell me a little bit about I, you know, your perspective, because you do work in that suite of tools, the rational suite that came into, gosh, that's probably 15 years ago, right? When they bought the rations?

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (13:45):

It came it came into ib. Rationale came into IBM in 2003

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (13:52):

23. Right. And so and so out of those, you know, we have a couple of, a couple of products that came through. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> that rationale came in 2003, and then Green Hat came into IBM as well, which gave us virtualization Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> in, I think around 2010. So I, I mean, I love, like I said, I love tests and I do need to correct. 'cause One of the pillars I said was launched. It's not, I'm so sorry. It is actually. Okay. So we, we did a, a, a rebranding of everything this year. And I just wanted to make sure that is correct going out. But, but because of those tools that were out during that timeframe, the DevOps automation team has those products, and we have starting to infuse AI within them. We have the ability to do performance testing, and you're able to see some insights from, from tests.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (14:55):

I, I can, I could talk more about our test portfolio even more, but I also, you know, even today we do have a new release that actually came out today. So, so that is something but ironic that we are gonna talk about testing in DevOps on the day that we have a release. Right. so one of the things about this, you know, in this space is quality. Quality is one of the key things that are happening in DevOps. We talk about that code, you know, yeah, the code can come in changes can happen. But when we start looking at DevOps, we're trying to really look at how efficient is your entire DevOps integration from, from ti from plan if those who use Jira from there all the way through the entire life cycle to see how are things coming together.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (15:49):

And the quality is what we're testing for. I mean, it's, it is not just, oh, we're just testing data, but we wanna know not only test data, but we wanna test the quality. Do we have bottlenecks? Are the, or are there some bottlenecks? Do we know what is holding us up? What are, what's some areas that we can work through to create more efficient or, and give more efficient, efficient practices or tools to the pro to the developers? So DevOps is just more than just tools. We need to look at it more so as what is the, the business need and the business and what they're looking for. They're looking for efficiency. They're look still looking to save money. They are looking to do to have quality and more deployment. More deployment, not, 'cause you remember during the, you know, the waterfall days, you're gotta go through and check every gate first before any a product can go out the door.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (16:48):

And that's taking, like, it could take months, it could take a year before you can get an upgrade to that product. So now we're in the space of will say also this states of agile development. And then I call it agile testing as as well mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. You are able to have more of your, of your code and more releases out quicker instead of waiting 6, 8, 12 months before you release something. And now people, if we, you know, if we notice today that we see releases coming out, even from software releases coming out from even our phones, you know, it could be every week or it could be every day from there. But testing is still the key. Many people think, oh, we can, we can just bypass testing. Oh, it's the, it's the develop, it's developed and we'll just toss it over the wall.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (17:45):

And that's it. And that's when you start finding out that your customers are saying, this is not good. So, so you have customer feedback that's tied into what the the, you know, the executives are looking for those and those stakeholders. 'cause They're trying to make sure, do we have what we need to develop and do we have what we need to take care of our customers on the other end? So that's where I, you know, that's one of the areas that we we're starting with. And that's, you know, that's happening within IBM. We, we make sure we take care our customers on the back end, and we make sure the developers have what they need on, on the front end, but we're also still working in between. 'cause There's a lot more that goes into just developing a product. And, and those are the things that I've learned. I mean, a lot of the, the go to market campaigns and working with the sales team and understanding what is necessary. So those are just a few things to kinda get us started. Wait, <laugh>,

Wade Erickson (18:49):

So you, you brought up AI in there, and yes, I know that AI is very much gaining popularity in infrastructure management. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> auto, auto creation of environments for scalability. You know, have Kubernetes and all those things that, you know, you spin it up just as it's needed and it's used. And then if it's idle for a while, it closes that down, just saves some power and all those kinds of things. And AI is, you know, and then layer security on top of that too. And so how do you see ai, you know, penetrating deeper into DevOps maybe in the next three to five years? 'cause I know it's a little slower, you know, we see all the chat GPT and all that stuff, right? It seems like every day there's somebody new releasing some new AI on the LLMs, but really AI is just way bigger than just, you know, I think what people have experienced in the last year. Right. So tell me a little bit, without revealing the secrets over there at IVM, I hope the future, just kind what, just, just generally, where do you see AI touching our DevOps space? And of course, test automation has its own flavor of

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (20:08):

Ai, right? Right. So when we, you know, when we start thinking about ai, most of the times people only look at it from the perspective of the customer. And we know in the space that we're in, we are, we are enterprise. So we're looking at this from you know, E two E enterprise or business or B2B from there, so what I'm starting, you know, what we're starting to see is of course, bottlenecks, identifying where you can save money, where can you save time. You could also look, you're looking at AI from the perspective of how is performance is really happening not only in, you know, just part of your application, but how is it working throughout the entire application. We know that there are areas where people are wanting to be able to create test cases or test scripts from the web rather than manually.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (21:09):

So maybe AI is being used at that pa at that point where it's looking at the application and suggesting what test scripts that needs to be run. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. Also when you start looking down the road, you're starting to say, well, well what, how can AI continue to integrate with other applications or other tools that are being used in the DevOps lifecycle? When you start thinking about, you know, the planning phase, how can that planning, planning, req, re requirements UX design, how is all of that coming, coming together? And we are able to create it manual, create it using AI without, without having to go write it out. Maybe using in a way that you'll talk about the quality of what is happening in the space, but you're also looking at I'll, I'll say like Adobe one of the Adobe products I've used a while and that we had to continually change those requirements.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (22:20):

But the problem, what has happened is that those requirements did not translate and get down to developers, or it may not made it to the test team, or it may have not made it to the UAT team. And, and then we, we may test on a wrong side of it, but AI would be able to help to go through and help you single out and say, okay, you have coverage here, but you don't need more coverage over here. So when there are new tests are being created or changes in the environment that's one thing. One of the areas that that people will always ask is, can we use AI to stand up an environment that would be something to do in the future as we're looking through it? How can how can AI stand up environments without you having to go configure it yourself and it just automatically say, oh, this is what we're looking for this is what we need.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (23:19):

This is the, the industry that we're working in. And so you'll, you'll have that. And then the other side is also working with tools that would accelerate the the building of test cases or the building of not only just test cases, but the building from the entire lifecycle all the way through release. And also for the feedback loop. How is that feedback loop is coming through? And that's, we all know that's important when it comes down to development for DevOps, we wanna know how much of this information is coming back to the development team and how are they using that from there. 'cause Right now we can work on working through creating this DevOps pieces of, oh, this is where my code broke. Okay. And can we go back and investigate the historical data of, of that information? So we know those are coming. But right now we're all working on trying to get AI in that space so that we can work and help our, you know, help our customers our clients just as much.

Wade Erickson (24:35):

Great, great. Great response. So, you know, it's already getting close to the end of our show. Yes. but this is where I like to kind of pivot a little bit and talk to about your career. Okay.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (24:48):

And

Wade Erickson (24:49):

I always look into profiles and see what's kind of unique. And of course, right away the 30 years at a single company, you know, that was our parents, you know, I think my dad had two jobs his whole career, you know, two different employers. And so but that's not as common today. Especially in my career. I think I had 10 year span at one company, and then three to five years, I always, if I take a job minimum three years, I gotta commit to that. You know, and then sometimes it's bill 3, 5, 7, whatever. But you did 30 years at IBM. And so I think a lot of people, they do the job hopping to, to one, they feel they're valued is changed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, they wanna have new experiences, new their interests in technology change. Right. And one thing with a big company like IBM being at Accenture for 10 years is you can job hop within the company. You don't have to leave the organization at these big ones, which is really nice. That's not always the case with smaller companies.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (25:51):

Right.

Wade Erickson (25:53):

Tell me a little bit about this 30 year journey and how you one kept yourself interested, kept your employer interested in you for promotions and, and job changes to keep up with where you wanted to go with your career. Okay. All at the same location, share that a little bit.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (26:10):

Wow. So, wait, it, like I said, it, it started, my journey started as, now I'm gonna start really young. When I was nine years old, working in working, I wasn't nine working <laugh> when I was nine, I was in elementary school. And we had a, my next door neighbor worked for IBM. I didn't know what IBM stood for, did not know what IBM did. All I knew is that when she took myself and her daughter to the office that I wanted to work for this company, I didn't know a thing. Hmm. But from that point there, I was like, okay, that's my determination for the rest of my life. I'm gonna work for IBM. So I ended up in as I said, when I was still in, still in Connecticut, I was working as a, an admin assistant executive admin assistant in the early nineties.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (27:01):

So I've been around. And then when I moved down to North Carolina to finish up school, I came, I went back as a, another executive admin assistant in IBM. So that kind of covered four years of, of me working with within IBM in this, this 28, the 32 years I call it. And in 90, you know, I came in in 96 as an intern. And then I never left <laugh>. So because I didn't leave my manager at that time, I was in the I was in the RTP area, but really technically I was really working in Raleigh on Six Forks Road for those who know it. I was there for the first two years of my career as an intern. I had, you know, I was finishing up my college degree and then and so when I got officially hired and came in, it was 98 and pulled those years.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (28:05):

So I didn't lose an experience from there and brought those years in. So one of the things that I started learning, and I've learned that over the years, is be open. Be open to learn things new and be open and be ready to volunteer. You don't get here without volunteering and not and taking a chance and taking the opportunity, even if you could say, I can't do it. Someone will always be present with you and be there to help you through it. I have, as I said, I've covered the country. I've worked in Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Maine, Massachusetts Florida, Georgia, <laugh>, C Washington, LA Oh, I went to LA three times well, LA one time California three times. Let me pull that together. And then quite a few in between. And these were customer, these were customer facing.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (29:04):

It wasn't all virtual. And I traveled weekly every week to wherever we needed to go. So one of the, and that was one of the things that I tried to help with some young adults. As you're coming through and starting your career let's start about thinking about what you wanna do. Because when you come outta college, you have one idea what you wanna do, but then once you get into the into corporate, you'll start looking at there are other opportunities and there's something else that may say, oh, I didn't know that I can use this with my computer science engineering degree. And that's what I ended up doing is just, I, I just kind of go, started going around to things. I sat and I sat with mentors, sat with some of the leadership, the executives, just to listen in on what is it that I can learn, what I can do better.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (29:58):

The other side was, if you know that you are looking for a promotion, find out what it is that that next level is going to be about. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then work your way into that promotion and work your way. Do I have those skills already set up? Are, am I missing those skills? Let me go pull it all together and, and go through it and say, these are the skills that I need to work on, or these are the areas that I know I'm strong in, but where can I help myself to be a little bit stronger in those areas? Who do I need to reach out to? And that's when we get to that, that mentoring space, because you, you wanna be able to work with people who would be able to speak about your name. We hear this all the time.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (30:41):

Speak your name in rooms that you are not present. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that has happened for me. All of the managers that I've had I've been challenged. They've gave me challenging assignments. And I went in and done and did that work that was there. But also I realized that I was good at fixing things <laugh>. So when you find out you're good at fixing certain things and you know how you can, you know, and building relationships, you take your strengths and you move that along with you as you're learning new. So I continue to learn education. I'm not short of education as of today. I realized, I, I, I found that I had over 900 classes, <laugh>.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (31:29):

And you, you learn so much from job to job, project to project but then you have to figure out how do we take that and transfer those skills to the next place and those are the areas that you'll start working in. So coming in from that development stage and then finding, you know, stumbling my way into tests. 'cause I was like this is not for me. But once I realized it really was for me, I kind of took off because I found my, I found my niche. And that's what you, what we need to do is find that niche. And opportunities are all always around. And so I will say, go with the next opportunity that you can. Even if it's a lateral move. Yep. Lateral moves are not bad. Take it. And and then grow with it. So, so Wade, that's, that's my story, <laugh>.

Wade Erickson (32:18):

So my takeaways are be willing and open-minded to try things that you may even be uncomfortable with. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, my little plug is, I've always said do the stuff the other people won't do because that generates so much value to your boss because it's like, Hey, no volunteers. And if you jump in there and you, you tend to keep doing all the things. You, you learn skills. Yes. And you're learning skills and they're way very well rounded. 'cause If you're only doing the stuff you wanna do, you're missing out on the other pieces of those puzzles. Right. Right.

Wade Erickson (32:55):

And then, and then third, always do, if you want a promotion, do that job before. Don't wait to get the promotion to get paid. That money. Always work at a level above you because like you said, they're gonna talk about you when you're not in the room. And it's gonna be like, Hey, yeah, I have this project over here that she jumped right in and you, I know you're looking at her for this project, man, talk about a self star. You know, those are the things you want them to, and they're only gonna experience those if you do the things that the boss worried about and they worry about the stuff that's not gonna get done a lot of times. Right. As much as the stuff that has to get done. Right. So it's a whole picture. And so thank you so much for that because that's, you're welcome. The kind of stuff that I think people that like the company they're in, but they're feeling a little bit, I wouldn't call it bored, but just not fulfilled as much. Man, there's just so many places you can go and like you said, lateral movement. Mm-Hmm. You wanna be the ceo, you gotta do lateral movements your whole career, right. Sales, marketing, production. I mean, you have to touch all of that to be able to be an executive

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (34:06):

And Very much so. Very much so. And, and learn, I mean those areas are still soft skills are still being used. People keep forgetting that, I don't know. You do need those soft skills because if they're not there, how are you going to communicate better with our, with clients? Absolutely. And also with your team as, as well. So,

Wade Erickson (34:28):

Alright, well I'm gonna quickly introduce the next week's show if that's okay. And then we're gonna wrap. Alright. Next week is Topeka Kale, staff software engineer at Guardian Health. It's Wednesday, July 3rd, so right before the holiday. Make sure you come and get a little bit of tech before you go into the holiday. And so that'll be on the third traditional time. So join us next week, another live episode. And thank you so much Letta for joining with us talking about testing DevOps and how to grow your career within a big company like IBM. So yes, appreciate your insights so much and, and have a great rest of your week.

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (35:12):

Thanks Wade. Same to you.

Wade Erickson (35:14):

All right, Bye-Bye

Willetta Ar-Rahmaan (35:16):

Bye-Bye.