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Recently I have changed my job and joined in a startup company for automation. We are 3 members in automation team but I feel the other 2 members are not that much capable to think the coding logic, debug problem and scripting as expected from automation tester.

I have conducted POC, created the road map and project configuration and integration (maven, TestNG, bitbucket and all) by myself.

All time only I have to complete and commit the task listed for automation. While since 1 month, other team members only getting what I have written as they are not sound in it.

My queries are :

  1. How do I deal with this situation. Do I carry on my progress as I am doing right now so once the other team members are used to it then they start with the same?

  2. Organization culture is, here you have to show your work there is no time bound. Also my team lead suggested that you can take enough time. No need to hurry. What should I do?

  3. Is there some other suggestion so I can use them and continue my work as I want?

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    A startup which is not in a hurry to accomplish assigned tasks, and not concerned about hiring staff which can hit ground with wheels spinning and delivering results? Such startup might not be around for long, be prepared to jump the ship. Do your best until then, of course - you might need the references.
    – Peter M. - stands for Monica
    Sep 26, 2017 at 14:21
  • @P.M, You were right that company has been closed :) and now I'm working with far better company then that one.
    – NarendraR
    Jul 24, 2018 at 13:15

2 Answers 2

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No matter what else you do, you will need your team lead's approval before you act.

I recommend that you take some proposals to your team lead, after you have done the following:

  1. Measure skill levels - find out just how much skill you and your fellow team members have with coding and designing automated tests. There are plenty of online tutorials and courses you can use for this. You may find that what you thought was a lack of skill is just miscommunication.
  2. Plan to cross-train all team members - once you have an idea where skills need to be boosted, you can come up with a plan to deal with that.
  3. Plan to train in the code framework(s) - Assuming your proof of concept and road map is approved, your team members will still need to become familiar with it. This prevents people recreating library code because they don't realize it already exists.

Once you have your lead's agreement and approval you can start looking at bringing everyone up to speed on what they need - if your lead is in charge of a larger group this means that you will be effectively the automation team lead. If not, you are positioning yourself as your lead's second. You will need to be careful about how you approach this to avoid causing difficulties in the team.

There is no "correct" answer for this situation. The first thing you need to do is find out if your impression of your team members' skills is correct, and move from there. You can't do this without your team lead's approval.

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    “it's better to ask forgiveness than permission” my team leader would rather that we figure it out in the team ourselves, instead of wasting his time. :) In a startup the team leader is probably the CTO, who probably is very busy. He also hires testers not to tell them how to do their job. Sure, giving a heads up might be good, but approval is overrated. I would say make an educated guess if you need approval. I might be more impressed with proactive behavior in my testing team. This also greatly depends on the country and company culture of course.
    – Niels van Reijmersdal
    Sep 26, 2017 at 15:52
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    Adding to Kate's excellent response to remember that an individual's strengths will begin to become quite clear as training progresses. Once a person's strengths are more pronounced, you can then guide the individual to focus on growing that particular skill-set (or area of the product). Then you will have SME's which is a classic corporate strategy.
    – Laura Hensley
    Sep 26, 2017 at 19:10
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I would give Mob-programming a try for some days until everyone is upto speed. Start writing some automated tests together at the same time. Find some extension you would like to add and implement it in mob sessions.

This is the quickest way to share knowledge, also basic programming practices.

Read http://mobprogramming.org/mob-programming-basics/

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