A passion for testing with Venu Subramania Iyer

In this episode, Shiv is in conversation with a colleague in PM Power, Venu Subrmania Iyer. Venu, who started his career as a systems engineer, shares

• Starting with hardware, software and testing
• Born in Kerala and grew up in Alleppey and grew up in Kottayam
• Studied Electrical Engineering
• Passion for engineering was inspired by an uncle and it was a difficult journey due to personal situations
• How he goes about in identifying solutions
• His passion was in electrical engineering, designing various elements in power engineering
• Wanting to get into some public sector enterprises, but getting into a multinational - as a customer service engineer to service TV systems and DVD, Audio systems
• Locating problems and isolating them based on simple documentation, using systematic approaches
• Using only 2 tools: multimeter and CRO [cathode ray oscilloscope]
• How he was able to adapt to a problem resolution approach from a designer-inventor aspiration [from R&D to service mindset]
• The pressure of solving issues while customers were watching over your shoulder and doing all it takes, including visiting a consumer court
• Moving to the software domain - as a hardware engineer and working with test engineers, taking an interest and choosing to get into systems testing
• Setting a personal goal to get into software and system testing
• Attending training from ISTQB and getting a formal certification
• Moving to an automotive company as the first independent test engineer
• Growing his team to over 200 in about 10 years
• How he was able to pick up the technology and domain aspects and the importance of having a team with complementary skills
• His approach to personal scaling by investing in developing others
• His thoughts on creating the awareness of testing in developers
• Injecting defects into software under test, to train testers
• Transitioning to managerial roles and then to a display manufacturing company
• Taking up a delivery role, to get experience on the right side of the V model
• The answer to a question on : His view on whether testing should always be independent or it can be embedded in the development process itself in the next episode

Venu has been in the embedded technology space for 24 years, working on cutting-edge R&D in the areas of Consumer Electronics, Display Systems, Semiconductor & Automotive domains. Starting his career as a Hardware Engineer in Philips,later switched to Software Testing due to his passion for finding software defects. He was 1st independent software testing engineer in Bosch Car Multimedia, Bangalore and later played several leadership roles in testing, Project Management and Quality assurance.

Prior to joining PM Power consulting, I was Director, Delivery and test in Harman for Automotive Digital cockpit and Telematics software solutions. I have played leadership role for delivery management, software testing and supplier delivery management.

More about Venu : https://pm-powerconsulting.com/experts/venu/