Have you ever wondered about the story behind the word ‘Zephyr’? Or how does one actually test a test management tool? Recently, we held “Inside Zephyr,” a special online community event to celebrate the Zephyr family of products. It was a sneak-peak behind the curtain, and the team of extraordinary people that make Zephyr tools so great – from original founders to developers, testers, and support agents.
Across a series of 12 interviews, we asked these extraordinary SmartBears both personal and tool-related questions, and got some fantastic answers, revealing their personal journeys, aspirations, and useful learnings from working on the Zephyr products. So, in case you missed the event, or just fancy a rewatch, feel free to sit down, grab your favorite drink, and dive into the world of Zephyr with these highlights.
How Zephyr Squad Support Prioritizes Queries
Have you ever wondered how customer care works? How quickly should you receive a reply to your support request, or how cases are prioritized? Hear this and more in this interview with Raksha Nataraj, Customer Care Product Lead for Zephyr Squad.
Raksha is a big fan of Zephyr Squad, saying that her favorite part of the product is that it’s simple and user friendly. “There’s just not much complexity involved in understanding the features and functionalities,” she adds. Since Raksha’s been part of the team for a while now, she also shares how Zephyr Squad has evolved over the years. You can meet Raksha in the Zephyr Community forums via @Raksha.
Learn About Zephyr Scale Roadmap and History
Cristiano Caetano is a Senior Product Manager for Zephyr Scale and Zephyr Squad. Along with Vitor Pelizza, he’s one of the founders of Zephyr Scale. In the interview, Cristiano discusses the long history of Zephyr Scale, and how it eventually joined the Zephyr product family. In the interview, he also offers a glimpse into what to expect for Zephyr Scale in the near future, including better performance, data residency, and supporting customer journey to Cloud. Want to connect with Cristiano in our community forums? Give him a shout via @CristianoCae.
The look back at the history of Zephyr Scale (previously called called TM4J) sparked trips down the memory lane for some community members. Here’s one from Andy (@MisterB):
Zephyr Enterprise 2021 Roadmap Explained
Govind Drolia (@govinddrolia) is the Product Owner for Zephyr Enterprise, the standalone test management solution in the Zephyr product family. Not only does Govind provide the perfect pitch for Zephyr Enterprise – ”consolidate teams across multiple Jira instances” – he also shares an in‑depth look at what features customers can expect down the line. He reveals that, with industry wide shift towards left, automation is one of the key focus areas in 2021.
And it’s not just better integration with popular external tools. “When we focus on automation, the SmartBear tools come first priority” says Govind, explaining how there are plans to invest more in integrations with TestComplete and ReadyAPI. If you wish to learn more about the 2021 roadmap, the development processes, and how the tool came to be called ‘Zephyr’, then this interview with Govind is definitely worth a watch.
The future of Test Management
What does the future of test management look like? “That’s a very big question, we could probably spend the whole day talking about this” answers Vitor Pelizza (@vpelizza), Senior Engineering Manager for Zephyr Scale. He deems that the future is very connected with automation, helping us be more efficient and cost effective at testing software.
At the same time, he believes manual testing will always have a role to play where creativity is involved, for example, in exploratory testing. If you are curious about emerging trends in software testing industry, and how Zephyr products are aligning with those trends, then this interview with Vitor is certainly worth checking out.
This interview sparked some interesting discussions in the community, especially regarding the value of manual testing vs automation. Here’s our favorite response from Toby (@Toby_Filthaus): "Checks should be done by a machine, but the testing needs to be done by creative human being!" We couldn’t agree more with you Toby!
Learn How Zephyr Scale is Tested
How do you test a test management tool? According to Johnatha Felix (@jfelix), Software Test Engineer for Zephyr Scale, it’s a lot about end-to-end acceptance testing using Selenium. “We have this regression suite we can run before we release any versions for Server and Cloud”, explains Johnatha, adding that this provides a good coverage of the core features. Having started in the team as a QA automation engineer, Johnatha recently made the transition to also work as a software developer. In the interview, he shares his experience of balancing responsibilities of both roles, and provides useful tips for anyone dealing with the notorious conflict between the devs and QA.
There are many more video interviews to watch, with exclusive insights and tips from Engineering Manager for Zephyr Squad, Senior Developer for Zephyr Scale, and Senior Support Engineer for Zephyr Enterprise. All the interviews are available on-demand via the tag InsideZephyr in the Zephyr community, as well as on our Youtube channel. Be sure to check out the ones you haven’t seen yet! Last but not least, a very special shoutout to community members @YannSAUTREUIL, @pgrzegorski, @Toby_Filthaus, @liocubs who actively participated in the “Inside Zephyr” event and won some cool prizes – you are what make this community so great!
Join the Zephyr Community
If you are not a Zephyr community member, why not join in the fun? It’s an amazing, collaborative space to connect with your fellow peers and learn more about Zephyr products directly from the users. Check out the respective community boards for Zephyr Squad, Zephyr Scale, and Zephyr Enterprise, and see it for yourself.
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