Virtusa Corporation, a global provider of digital strategy, digital engineering, and IT services and solutions that help clients change and disrupt markets through innovation engineering, recently introduced a QA automation module at Horizon Campus – a leading private university in Sri Lanka, with plans to roll-out the module across other local universities to address the growing skill demand for test automation experts.
Quality Assurance (QA) is one of the most critical processes in a software development lifecycle, and QA Automation is increasingly gaining popularity among IT solutions providers to take over routine testing tasks and test cases at a speed and scale that is manually impossible. This in turn frees up project teams to manually handle more complex levels of problem solving, helping speed up workflows and delivery, increase accuracy and maximise efficiencies.
“Gaining test automation skills has become a crucial requisite for a future-proof QA career,” said Virtusa Head of HR for India and Sri Lanka Rahul Sahay. “We identified technical and test automation skills, tools and knowledge required to elevate software testers to a highly marketable position as the demand for test automation continues to grow. The immediate next step was to reflect our findings as a learning module in partnership with Sri Lanka’s higher educational institutes, so that we can synchronise skill development with the skills demand of the industry.”
The module creation was carried out under Virtusa’s Campus Reach initiative – an industry-academia partnership designed to support the next generation of IT professionals to be workforce ready and contribute to the IT industry’s growth. Campus Reach carries out IT curriculum development, internships and mentoring among partner universities and institutes of higher education, directly improving skill capacities of potential employees.
The QA Automation module builds on a strong foundation to Quality Assurance followed by test automation architecture, deployment and reporting, with practical lab sessions and case studies to enable students to transition from manual to test automation. The sessions were conducted by a team of Virtusa experts; Senior Director – Delivery Shenal Colonne, Manager – QA Praveen Akmeemanage, Lead Consultant – QA Thilina Ranasinghe and Consultant – Technology Aravinda Samarakoon. The launch of the QA Automation module follows the successful introduction of a Salesforce module by Virtusa across local universities earlier this year.
“It is important that we develop skillsets that align with company competencies as well as future talent needs of a rapidly evolving industry. We are creating a globally benchmarked talent pool that can remain highly marketable in both credentials and expertise in a very competitive talent landscape,” Virtusa Head of Talent Development and Campus Reach for Sri Lanka Sampath Thrimavithana further elaborated.
