Kaushik Raghavan
Test Lead
Softsmith
Kaushik Raghavan is a member of:
Family Background
I come from a family of teachers. My father is professor and my mom is a home maker. I come from a small town in Andhra Pradesh. Inspired by my father and uncles, I also took up training at corporates along with consulting. I am married to an IITian and she works along with me in the softsmith.
Advice for upcoming professionals
I hail for a family of academicians. My dad and my uncles are either teachers or professors. Coming form a middle class family becoming a software engineer was dream for me. My grand father who is 90 now an Ex- Head master feels happy and proud about of his grandson work for major IT companies.
Intellectual Recommendations
1) Who moved my cheese by Spencer Johnson.
2) Sack the ceo by Jitendra Jain.
3) Rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
4) http://testertested.blogspot.in/
5) http://www.satisfice.com/
6) http://www.ted.com/
Advice for Additional Certifications
1) ISTQB (Foundation and Advanced level)
2) HP AIS – Functional Testing v11 certification.
3) Certified Associate in Software Testing (CAST)
4) Certified Software Tester (CSTE)
5) Certified Manager of Software Testing (CMST)
Excellence of Testing Professionals
1)People with poor interpersonal and communication skills.
2)A self centered person who neither listens to others nor share his knowledge with others.
3)Those who are not flexible and cooperative, highly orthodox in their stands and who are not ready to recognize and appreciate co-workers.
My Road map Ahead
In next 5 years I am look myself as a CEO "Parikshan Technologies" ( Name of the company I am going to start).
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Starting Differently Again
Frankly I have no regrets with my career. I have been associated with same organization for more than 7 years now and I am happy with the way my career has shaped out.Nevertheless , I regret not working on platform other than windows. I should have worked more on opensource tools.
Future of QA
1) Teaching people is the biggest motivation for me. I love teaching.
2) Solving day to day problems at work makes me happy.
3) The exposure and knowledge that I get as result of my work is the biggest satisfaction.
4) Smiles and relief on costumers face gives me the actual kick.
Contribution to the field
Both are important. But satisfaction will take the driver seat. I am happy to earn a little less if am happy with my work. I have been with the same organization from the day one of my career and the thing that is driving me is not money alone. Its the job that I do.
Yes I have worked over time, Nights and Weekends as well. I have learnt a lot of things by doing so. I was recognized as a asset by the organization. I have earned the respect as the most dependable employee by my employer.
The Big Question
I definitely believe I am successful. Over the past 7 years I have been associated with more than 25 clients of our company. I have good good relationship with those clients. In all the training that I have conducted till date i have always got good feedback.
Changes in professional environment
It was my dream to become a software engineer. Good that immediately after college I joined softsmith (I am still working here). Working in a small company allowed me the freedom to experiment, express ideas and implement them.
Situation where you played important role as a team player
We were consulting for critical project at Sword Global. Our team had worked hard and brought the project on track and suddenly I had an assignment with other client and sword was ready to let me go. So I made an arrangement in such a way I worked morning at the other client and Evenings at sword.
Growth Initiatives
1) I learnt a lot of test automation and performance testing tools.
2) Conducted a lot of training, this gave a an opportunity to work with different tools and applications.
3) Attended several boot camps and webinars on various tools.