Guest Speaker:
Transcripts
Welcome to Tech Lyceum, where we dive into the technologies shaping the future. You're in for a treat. This is a very special episode. We are spotlighting a major leap forward in quality engineering, the Birlasoft Lynx solution. That's what we're going to be talking about in this journey of transformation with Gen AI, agentic AI and automation driving the future of QA. So let's unpack what all of this means with our expert today.
We're excited to welcome Vishvesh Arumugam, Global Head of testing practice, and a true visionary who will be sharing some valuable insights with us. Vishvesh is a seasoned and dynamic leader in testing and has been at the forefront of shaping the future of Quality Engineering. He has designed AI infused solutions and enterprise scale testing models that drive business value and agility. His forward thinking insights continue to redefine how modern organizations approach quality in this ever evolving technology landscape. This is the chance to hear from someone who's not just shaping the future of testing, but helping others need it.
Vishvesh, it's good to have you here. Are you ready to dive in?
Listen On
Speaker – Vishvesh – 01:25
Thanks, Neerja, it's a pleasure to be participating in this podcast.
Thanks, Neerja, it's a pleasure to be participating in this podcast.
Speaker – Neerja – 01:29
All right, here's what I'd like to start with. Vishvesh, in today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, right?
Q: How critical is it for enterprises to adopt modern QA best practices such as AI Gen, AI and Intelligent Automation, and what are the risks of falling behind across various industries where quality, efficiency and uptime are crucial?
All right, here's what I'd like to start with. Vishvesh, in today's rapidly evolving tech landscape, right?
Q: How critical is it for enterprises to adopt modern QA best practices such as AI Gen, AI and Intelligent Automation, and what are the risks of falling behind across various industries where quality, efficiency and uptime are crucial?
Speaker – Vishvesh – 01:52
That's an interesting question, right, which, which has been asked by most of them in the industry. As recently as a decade back, AI was considered alien to the QA world. As recently as five years back, AI was considered a luxury in the QA world, almost a fancy Showboat. Everything changed the day Microsoft acquired OpenAI and introduced ChatGPT to the world today, QA without AI and Gen AI isn't simple words, just legacy QA, right? Traditionally, manual testing is simply not enough to meet the volume, variety, and velocity of technological change in industry. Customers locked in this legacy QA tend to lose out on the many advantages of modern QA processes enterprise customers need to be able to be nimble and agile in the competitive marketplace and often find themselves pulled down by these slow QA processes. See, by not investing in the next gen QA solutions based on AI, Gen AI customers are putting themselves at risk, not just both strategically and competitively, but also financially and operationally. If you ask me, the legacy QA processes are lengthy and cumbersome, as compared to the modern processes, which are nimble and agile. See this directly translates to faster time to market and enables one to put enables one to outpace the competitors. The other important aspect is technology overhead and lock in cost in legacy QA especially in traditional test automation, with over reliance on handful of SMEs, is increasing the automation cost today, so that is putting a lot of pressure on the overall testing spend, if you ask me, the last important aspect to this question is there's a lot of limited visibility to the decision makers today, so they're not able to make quick decisions faster, you know, respond faster to the ever evolving, changing needs of the QA.
So, to conclude, to this response, next gen QA based on AI, Gen AI, is thus a strategy enabler to enterprises and not merely a quality checker.
That's an interesting question, right, which, which has been asked by most of them in the industry. As recently as a decade back, AI was considered alien to the QA world. As recently as five years back, AI was considered a luxury in the QA world, almost a fancy Showboat. Everything changed the day Microsoft acquired OpenAI and introduced ChatGPT to the world today, QA without AI and Gen AI isn't simple words, just legacy QA, right? Traditionally, manual testing is simply not enough to meet the volume, variety, and velocity of technological change in industry. Customers locked in this legacy QA tend to lose out on the many advantages of modern QA processes enterprise customers need to be able to be nimble and agile in the competitive marketplace and often find themselves pulled down by these slow QA processes. See, by not investing in the next gen QA solutions based on AI, Gen AI customers are putting themselves at risk, not just both strategically and competitively, but also financially and operationally. If you ask me, the legacy QA processes are lengthy and cumbersome, as compared to the modern processes, which are nimble and agile. See this directly translates to faster time to market and enables one to put enables one to outpace the competitors. The other important aspect is technology overhead and lock in cost in legacy QA especially in traditional test automation, with over reliance on handful of SMEs, is increasing the automation cost today, so that is putting a lot of pressure on the overall testing spend, if you ask me, the last important aspect to this question is there's a lot of limited visibility to the decision makers today, so they're not able to make quick decisions faster, you know, respond faster to the ever evolving, changing needs of the QA.
So, to conclude, to this response, next gen QA based on AI, Gen AI, is thus a strategy enabler to enterprises and not merely a quality checker.
Speaker – Neerja – 04:09
Right. Got you. Vishvesh, so as a follow up to that,
Q: What are the new age challenges that enterprises are encountering in their pursuit of advanced testing goals or QA maturity, and are there specific roadblocks, technological, organizational or cultural that are slowing down their progress?
Right. Got you. Vishvesh, so as a follow up to that,
Q: What are the new age challenges that enterprises are encountering in their pursuit of advanced testing goals or QA maturity, and are there specific roadblocks, technological, organizational or cultural that are slowing down their progress?
Speaker – Vishvesh – 04:30
Yeah, very good question. Based on our interactions with our customers, we have noticed certain recurrent challenges. The more recent challenges that we have heard are, you know, we have actually categorized them into five broad category, you know, challenges today.
The first one is there's an increasing complexity of applications in a classic is a classic challenge, right, involving multiple levels of customization being done, regional variations. Then next is load based functionalities being deployed and inactive core blocks. This is particularly evident in the manufacturing ERP world.
On the second challenge, the volume of change, especially in the banking sector, the volume of change with a constant, you know, avalanche of upgrades, updates and patches, right? Especially banks typically deploy multiple updates per year for most of the core banking systems, along with numerous critical patches to ensure security and compliance. The next important thing is, as I said earlier, the velocity of change sees for one of our high-tech customers. We have to test their core application release every two weeks. This puts a lot of pressure on the testing team. Today, the next important transformation the industry is going through is deploying and implementing a lot of AI, Gen AI based applications, and that typically do not follow the traditional testing processes. And if you ask me, there is no single source of truth for Gen AI based created content, only guidelines are there today. So for one of our licenses customer, we are to get innovative to address such novel applications which leverages AI agent AI the last challenge is about the lack of standardization in QA processes, especially coupled with the time crunch and extremely aggressive testing windows presents a significant challenges in a complex landscape these issues makes it difficult to maintain consistency and efficiency in quality assurance efforts.
Yeah, very good question. Based on our interactions with our customers, we have noticed certain recurrent challenges. The more recent challenges that we have heard are, you know, we have actually categorized them into five broad category, you know, challenges today.
The first one is there's an increasing complexity of applications in a classic is a classic challenge, right, involving multiple levels of customization being done, regional variations. Then next is load based functionalities being deployed and inactive core blocks. This is particularly evident in the manufacturing ERP world.
On the second challenge, the volume of change, especially in the banking sector, the volume of change with a constant, you know, avalanche of upgrades, updates and patches, right? Especially banks typically deploy multiple updates per year for most of the core banking systems, along with numerous critical patches to ensure security and compliance. The next important thing is, as I said earlier, the velocity of change sees for one of our high-tech customers. We have to test their core application release every two weeks. This puts a lot of pressure on the testing team. Today, the next important transformation the industry is going through is deploying and implementing a lot of AI, Gen AI based applications, and that typically do not follow the traditional testing processes. And if you ask me, there is no single source of truth for Gen AI based created content, only guidelines are there today. So for one of our licenses customer, we are to get innovative to address such novel applications which leverages AI agent AI the last challenge is about the lack of standardization in QA processes, especially coupled with the time crunch and extremely aggressive testing windows presents a significant challenges in a complex landscape these issues makes it difficult to maintain consistency and efficiency in quality assurance efforts.
Speaker – Neerja – 06:32
Right. Okay, thank you for that insight. Vishvesh, and that brings me to this question,
Q: What are the essential elements of an effective solution to enable Gen AI or agentic AI driven test automation. And how is Birlasoft addressing this opportunity? What is your strategic approach to delivering such innovation at scale?
Right. Okay, thank you for that insight. Vishvesh, and that brings me to this question,
Q: What are the essential elements of an effective solution to enable Gen AI or agentic AI driven test automation. And how is Birlasoft addressing this opportunity? What is your strategic approach to delivering such innovation at scale?
Speaker – Vishvesh - 06:56
Yeah, there are two parts to this question. The first part is about the essential elements, right?
So we've conducted the multiple workshops on this exact topic with multiple customers. Based on their feedback, we've identified key tenets for a Gen AI ,agentic AI powered solution for testing. To achieve an optimal testing solution, it's essential to have test automation solution that is more reliable, robust and consistent in detecting bugs, right? And the solution should be intelligent enough to understand the context and act autonomously, because the expectation is all changing, and we have to be more autonomous, right? And the next is all about enabling seamless automation across the board and reducing the manual intervention is another important element which is needed in the solutions. Right? Then next is about adopting low code, no code approach minimizes dependency on specialized SMEs, thereby simplifying the implementation management. This approach also reduces the overage of traditional testing processes. Furthermore, ensuring comprehensive end to end business process coverage across various systems is crucial nowadays, because everybody is transforming, they're bringing a lot of new features, solutions from multiple technologies stack, right? This holistic approach guarantees thorough testing, providing a seamless and integrated experience.
To your second part of the question, How is Birlasoft approaching the same we are making a significant investment in a platform centric strategy to develop our cutting edge Gen AI powered autonomous test automation platform, Birlasoft Lynx, which is designed to revolutionize the entire end to end testing lifecycle. Our approach includes agentic AI that can autonomously generate and execute test cases based on requirements, logs, real time user interactions, thereby ensuring comprehensive coverage and identifying edge use cases right. The next important, you know, aspect is there's a lot of chat bots across industry. Every everybody's using chat bots, and there's a need for the same in testing as well. Enterprise quality chat bot is something we provide answers on progresses, defect analytics and insights for test planning, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience. This actually cuts down the coordination and, you know, waiting for a response from another testing provider or so, right? The next important aspect is a plug in centric compatibility. So by developing a plug in centric approach, we maximize compatibility today, allowing our solution to uplift the customer's existing solutions and frameworks and enable continual usage of their existing test assets. The last is about low code user friendly design. Our platform is designed to be low code and user friendly, significantly reducing the need of SME involvement and streamlining the testing processes.
Yeah, there are two parts to this question. The first part is about the essential elements, right?
So we've conducted the multiple workshops on this exact topic with multiple customers. Based on their feedback, we've identified key tenets for a Gen AI ,agentic AI powered solution for testing. To achieve an optimal testing solution, it's essential to have test automation solution that is more reliable, robust and consistent in detecting bugs, right? And the solution should be intelligent enough to understand the context and act autonomously, because the expectation is all changing, and we have to be more autonomous, right? And the next is all about enabling seamless automation across the board and reducing the manual intervention is another important element which is needed in the solutions. Right? Then next is about adopting low code, no code approach minimizes dependency on specialized SMEs, thereby simplifying the implementation management. This approach also reduces the overage of traditional testing processes. Furthermore, ensuring comprehensive end to end business process coverage across various systems is crucial nowadays, because everybody is transforming, they're bringing a lot of new features, solutions from multiple technologies stack, right? This holistic approach guarantees thorough testing, providing a seamless and integrated experience.
To your second part of the question, How is Birlasoft approaching the same we are making a significant investment in a platform centric strategy to develop our cutting edge Gen AI powered autonomous test automation platform, Birlasoft Lynx, which is designed to revolutionize the entire end to end testing lifecycle. Our approach includes agentic AI that can autonomously generate and execute test cases based on requirements, logs, real time user interactions, thereby ensuring comprehensive coverage and identifying edge use cases right. The next important, you know, aspect is there's a lot of chat bots across industry. Every everybody's using chat bots, and there's a need for the same in testing as well. Enterprise quality chat bot is something we provide answers on progresses, defect analytics and insights for test planning, ensuring a seamless and engaging user experience. This actually cuts down the coordination and, you know, waiting for a response from another testing provider or so, right? The next important aspect is a plug in centric compatibility. So by developing a plug in centric approach, we maximize compatibility today, allowing our solution to uplift the customer's existing solutions and frameworks and enable continual usage of their existing test assets. The last is about low code user friendly design. Our platform is designed to be low code and user friendly, significantly reducing the need of SME involvement and streamlining the testing processes.
Speaker – Neerja - 10:00
Okay, that's great. Thanks. Vishvesh, let's talk about Birlasoft Lynx. Birlasoft is redefining testing with the power of Gen AI and agentic AI, and just recently launched this Birlasoft Lynx that we talk about.
Q: So how does this platform support enterprise clients in achieving their QA transformation goals, and how does it align with organizational or project specific objectives?
Okay, that's great. Thanks. Vishvesh, let's talk about Birlasoft Lynx. Birlasoft is redefining testing with the power of Gen AI and agentic AI, and just recently launched this Birlasoft Lynx that we talk about.
Q: So how does this platform support enterprise clients in achieving their QA transformation goals, and how does it align with organizational or project specific objectives?
Speaker – Vishvesh – 10:28
Yeah, a very interesting question. I'd say powered links isn't just a leap in automation, it's a strategic enabler of smarter, faster and leaner quality engineering. We have distilled the core benefits into three powerful dimensions. The first one is all about quality, which is actually elevated with intelligence, with AI, Gen AI, right? And the first one in that is about the test coverage. So we with Gen AI, the overall test coverage is more than 97 percentage, especially via Gen AI led intelligent traceability across requirements code and defects. The next important aspect is there's a 40% drop in false positives thanks to the context of our intelligent test scripts, right? That's, that's, you know, being widely used today. The next important aspect is improved defect detection accuracy through AI generated test cases and autonomous test optimization. The second dimension to the benefit our platform will deliver is the cost of quality reduction, up to 50% reduction in the testing effort, and that's what we assured via a automated test design, data generation, auto healing and validations. The next important challenge the industry goes through is a rework and defect leakage, right? That's where we say there's a 30% reduction in rework and defect leakage cost through predictive quality, analytics. The last dimension is about acceleration. Accelerated with autonomy is what our platform delivers. The first important aspect in acceleration is how fast we can deliver so 50% faster test execution cycle with the AI powered execution and self healing. The second important aspect in that is up to 70% faster through converting natural language to automation test scripts and thereby taking into all the way to execution. The last one is what instant impact analysis accelerates release confidence and decision making.
Yeah, a very interesting question. I'd say powered links isn't just a leap in automation, it's a strategic enabler of smarter, faster and leaner quality engineering. We have distilled the core benefits into three powerful dimensions. The first one is all about quality, which is actually elevated with intelligence, with AI, Gen AI, right? And the first one in that is about the test coverage. So we with Gen AI, the overall test coverage is more than 97 percentage, especially via Gen AI led intelligent traceability across requirements code and defects. The next important aspect is there's a 40% drop in false positives thanks to the context of our intelligent test scripts, right? That's, that's, you know, being widely used today. The next important aspect is improved defect detection accuracy through AI generated test cases and autonomous test optimization. The second dimension to the benefit our platform will deliver is the cost of quality reduction, up to 50% reduction in the testing effort, and that's what we assured via a automated test design, data generation, auto healing and validations. The next important challenge the industry goes through is a rework and defect leakage, right? That's where we say there's a 30% reduction in rework and defect leakage cost through predictive quality, analytics. The last dimension is about acceleration. Accelerated with autonomy is what our platform delivers. The first important aspect in acceleration is how fast we can deliver so 50% faster test execution cycle with the AI powered execution and self healing. The second important aspect in that is up to 70% faster through converting natural language to automation test scripts and thereby taking into all the way to execution. The last one is what instant impact analysis accelerates release confidence and decision making.
Speaker – Neerja – 12:24
Got it. Vishvesh, thank you. I have one final question, and I think it's an important one to address. Shifting from traditional test automation to Gen AI powered automation is a major undertaking, right?
Q: What is it that enterprises should look for when selecting the strategic partner for this journey, and what qualities or capabilities should they prioritize the most
Got it. Vishvesh, thank you. I have one final question, and I think it's an important one to address. Shifting from traditional test automation to Gen AI powered automation is a major undertaking, right?
Q: What is it that enterprises should look for when selecting the strategic partner for this journey, and what qualities or capabilities should they prioritize the most
Speaker – Vishvesh – 12:47
Absolutely. See from the perspective of an enterprise customer, these are very exciting times. Today, our customers get to witness the market transformation towards Genia powered solutions, and are often faced a multitude of new and unfamiliar choices to make. So traditional, large scale service providers may provide scale, but innovation is more pronounced and transformative in the mid sized providers like ourselves. Birlasoft is in fact leading the charge in terms of GNI based testing solutions. As already mentioned, our birlasov links automation platform is transforming the testing industry. We have been developing and investing specialized talent and expertise to guide our customers in this new territory and smoothen their transition to Gen a based solutions. What should they do to select a right partner. If you ask me from that perspective, they should prioritize partners with a demonstrable track record of successfully integrating AI into various testing phases. That's an important aspect, right? The second important aspect is focus on tangible outcomes in Roa. Some of the key factors as part of this are, what does the solution bring to the table? You know, by what percentage are the cost of quality improves, right? And how much more efficient will my QA cycle become? How will it improve my quality levels in difficult leakage. Is AI, Gen AI being used optimally to maximize value generation. All of these factors something that they should consider from an outcome and measurable, you know, ROI perspective.
The next aspect is they should look for solutions with end to end coverage and robust in nature, while being able to scale as per their needs. And next is all about. They should avoid solutions that seek to lock them in, right? Because that is that's a bigger challenge today in industry. The next aspect is, you know, the partner should have clear understanding of your specific testing needs, and they should assess AI testing maturity. Partner should invest time in understanding the pain points needs, an organization readiness. We at Birlasoft has AI maturity assessment toolkit to assess and recommend approach for the transition from Legacy QA to AI led approach leveraging Birlasoft Lynx right. Last but not least, choosing a partner that demonstrates a strong commitment to continuous innovation and development is important, and that is what Birlasoft is all signing up our skin in the game for the engagements that we sign up.
Absolutely. See from the perspective of an enterprise customer, these are very exciting times. Today, our customers get to witness the market transformation towards Genia powered solutions, and are often faced a multitude of new and unfamiliar choices to make. So traditional, large scale service providers may provide scale, but innovation is more pronounced and transformative in the mid sized providers like ourselves. Birlasoft is in fact leading the charge in terms of GNI based testing solutions. As already mentioned, our birlasov links automation platform is transforming the testing industry. We have been developing and investing specialized talent and expertise to guide our customers in this new territory and smoothen their transition to Gen a based solutions. What should they do to select a right partner. If you ask me from that perspective, they should prioritize partners with a demonstrable track record of successfully integrating AI into various testing phases. That's an important aspect, right? The second important aspect is focus on tangible outcomes in Roa. Some of the key factors as part of this are, what does the solution bring to the table? You know, by what percentage are the cost of quality improves, right? And how much more efficient will my QA cycle become? How will it improve my quality levels in difficult leakage. Is AI, Gen AI being used optimally to maximize value generation. All of these factors something that they should consider from an outcome and measurable, you know, ROI perspective.
The next aspect is they should look for solutions with end to end coverage and robust in nature, while being able to scale as per their needs. And next is all about. They should avoid solutions that seek to lock them in, right? Because that is that's a bigger challenge today in industry. The next aspect is, you know, the partner should have clear understanding of your specific testing needs, and they should assess AI testing maturity. Partner should invest time in understanding the pain points needs, an organization readiness. We at Birlasoft has AI maturity assessment toolkit to assess and recommend approach for the transition from Legacy QA to AI led approach leveraging Birlasoft Lynx right. Last but not least, choosing a partner that demonstrates a strong commitment to continuous innovation and development is important, and that is what Birlasoft is all signing up our skin in the game for the engagements that we sign up.
Speaker – Neerja - 15:21
Well, Vishvesh, this has been amazing for us to be able to take away all these insights. If you were to sum up this entire conversation in a sentence or two, what would you say the biggest takeaway would be.
Well, Vishvesh, this has been amazing for us to be able to take away all these insights. If you were to sum up this entire conversation in a sentence or two, what would you say the biggest takeaway would be.
Speaker – Vishvesh - 15:35
There's a lot of things happening in the industry, and it's actually moving at a real fast pace, the customer should start investing in adopting AI Gen AI powered solutions. They should start with a POC, an assessment, quick assessment, get a POC done, and then they should put together a transition roadmap and then, you know, get into this game, right?
That is what is the major need today, and we are there to help and support that overall transition from a legacy QA to an engineer-powered quality engineering strategy.
There's a lot of things happening in the industry, and it's actually moving at a real fast pace, the customer should start investing in adopting AI Gen AI powered solutions. They should start with a POC, an assessment, quick assessment, get a POC done, and then they should put together a transition roadmap and then, you know, get into this game, right?
That is what is the major need today, and we are there to help and support that overall transition from a legacy QA to an engineer-powered quality engineering strategy.
Speaker – Neerja – 16:08
Well, it's good to know that these are the kind of experts there are around so big thanks to you, Vishvesh, for sharing your thoughts on the subject. It's been a real pleasure having you on
Well, it's good to know that these are the kind of experts there are around so big thanks to you, Vishvesh, for sharing your thoughts on the subject. It's been a real pleasure having you on
Speaker – Vishvesh – 16:18
thanks a lot, Neerja, for having me in this session.
thanks a lot, Neerja, for having me in this session.
Speaker – Neerja - 16:22
Well, thanks for joining us on Tech Lyceum. We hope you had a great time, and we'll be back with more of these conversations about technologies that are transforming our world. Until then, it's me. Neerja, signing off. Bye.
Well, thanks for joining us on Tech Lyceum. We hope you had a great time, and we'll be back with more of these conversations about technologies that are transforming our world. Until then, it's me. Neerja, signing off. Bye.
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