Software Testing News Journalist, Leah Alger, catches up with the Founder of Cordbyte Limited and Automation Test Lead at a Major UK Bank, Richard Owusu, to discuss his experience and approach in the banking sector

Owusu began his career 7 years ago as an Abode frontend developer after completing his Bsc Computing Degree, before subsequently moving into Java programming. Now he is the Test Automation Lead at a Major UK Bank and the creator of Cordbyte Limited, a company that offers testing and quality assurance services to Major UK banks, who “enjoys writing pieces of code and leading automation testers to solve tricky technical challenges”.

Technical leader

His responsibilities consist of providing technical leadership and approaches for test automation while overlooking different teams spread across parts of the world. Specialising in UI and API testing, the tools Owusu uses are Java, Selenium, Cucumber and Rest Assured because “they are well established in the industry and have great community support. Best of all, they are open source libraries”.

Owusu enjoys working on banking projects because it helps customers manage their bank accounts online at any time, everywhere; as well as allows banks to administer customers’ accounts “extremely efficiently”.

Testing banking apps

According to him, the typical stages involved in testing banking applications include:

• Contributing to user-stories from a testing perspective
• Writing test scenarios
• Automating test scenarios
• Executing test scenarios
• Running regression test
• Reporting/communicating results.

Approaches and methodologies

He noted that the approaches and methodologies that should be followed to successfully test workflows involved in banking applications compromise:

• Breaking software features into smaller testable scenarios to make testing easier to execute and understand.
• Using Behaviour Driven Development and Acceptance Test-Driven Development when implementing methodologies for testing applications.

According to Owusu, API testing meshed with external UI Audit System test can be a challenge, which consists of automating both API test and UI tests in a single test scenario.

Automation

Specialising in automation, it was essential Owusu revealed his thoughts on automation changing the way online banking is tested.

Owusu revealed: “Automation fits perfectly with the DevOps model, as it allows laborious tests to be written once, runs automatically with a click of a button and reduces regression test times, in most cases from days to a few hours.

“Gherkin Language which is ubiquitous in tests automation also helps to communicate tests to non-technical people in plain and simple English.”

Customers needs

Owusu revealed that he enjoys working on software test automation because it allows him to write codes and to be part of the testing process, ensuring software is delivered to meet customer’s expectations and needs.

He also believes test automation is here to stay and will improve over time as businesses keep looking for efficient and faster ways to test and deploy applications.

Written by Leah Alger