Retrospective in 2018

Recent a couple of years, I had retrospective every year in Japanese. This time, I would write up in English as well here. Japanese is here.

2018

Work

From last December, I started working as a member of HeadSpin as a senior software engineer, device automation. They are a mobile performance venture company. I am going to relocate from Japan to America, Silicon Valley, after getting US working VISA. I should work from Japan remotely till the time.

I had worked for an international team at Cookpad as a lead software engineer in Quality. As the role, I built and helped to improve various workflows and Android development environment, CI and test automation – for instance here and here. They were very challenging things for me. (And some of them were also frontier in automation world.)

Through the Cookpad, I also experienced to work with over 10 nationalities guys there. I almost worked with Japanese guys before joining the team. The diverse environment provided me with a brilliant experience. We communicated in English as a second language mainly.

I talked my automation experience, especially how to design (mobile) test automaiton at Cookpad tech conf 2018 in early 2018.

OSS

I have committed Appium harder than 2017, such as fixing issues, guiding users and implementing and testing new features for W3C or extension. I started maintaining other client libraries such as Python and .NET as well as Ruby. Took a look at robotframework a bit in addition.

Appium is working well to separate testing script layer for users and concrete handler layer for applications and devices. Appium users can focus on their domain like an article of test.ai to leverage their products for various platforms till they will optimise their running environment.

I predicted XCTest and Espresso would have been close to developers to enhance CI environment to run them per push to GitHub for example since they can improve layers close to their platform. I published an article from my previous company’s tech blog as an example to speed CI time up to build full functional regression tests using Espresso.

Meanwhile, Appium can be a tool to simulate real end users. I know the real end users is not true in strictly though. Each library/framework differs from each other. Users must choose them properly understanding their characteristic.

They have matured continuously. Very lovely…

Conferences

SeleniumConf 2019 Tokyo is coming! I am one of the organisers for the conference. The official conference was organised in the US or EU every year. Next, the Tokyo conf is the first the official conf outside there. We finally got a bunch of CfPs. Looking forward to reviewing them!

I have submitted two CFP to AppiumConf2019. The 2018 was in last April.

In the JaSST Tokyo which was one of the biggest conferences for Test/QA engineers in Japan, I joined the closing session as one of the panellists. I also talked about my experience working outside Japan in another session there.

In December, I helped to organise a test automation conference in Japan.

Others

I reviewed an Android testing book. I will be a co-author for an iOS testing book which will start to found the book next year.

re-cap

A big change was joining to HeadSpin in last December. I like developing BtoC service like Cookpad. (And Cookpad is food related industry!!) But I also have some thought for automation and Test/QA field through my experience. Thus, I have decided to challenge it in HeadSpin with their offer to me.

2019

It strongly depends on the US working VISA. Our life will change dramatically if I succeed to get the VISA. We hope to obtain it successfully though.

I would like to continue to commit Appium and the eco-system to evolve mobile test environment. Would like to contribute Test/QA world as well.

Python, NodeJS and Go are new for me which I should learn to develop my products in work and private. I am developing AppiumSwiftClient as a prototype.

Do not forget to enjoy and live with my family, it is the most important, of course.