How Bukalapak Cuts down Its Feature Testing Time Process (And Cost!)

Back then, a Nigerian novelist and poet, Chinua Achebe said: “If you don’t like someone’s story, write your own.” The quote might perfectly resonate the feeling that Lamhot JM Siagian had during his job interview at Bukalapak. Lamhot is a Software Engineer in Test at Bukalapak’s Core Quality Assurance Squad and a writer.

“My book is about software automation test. I haven’t seen any Indonesian author write that kind of topic in Bahasa Indonesia, so I made one myself. It started when I was interviewed by the HR Department at Bukalapak. The HRD asked how I would imagine my life in the next five years. I said that writing a book is one of my dreams. I mean, I love writing but I need real evidence of my passion. That day I realized that I’ve always taken notes when I work. So, why don’t I compile those small, scattered notes into a book?” he shared.

Lamhot said that his book titled Otomatisasi Pengujian Perangkat Lunak received appreciation from his colleagues at Bukalapak. “Some even bought the e-book and hard copy,” Lamhot said happily.

His book, however, only covers 25 percent of tools or automation technology used at Bukalapak. “My book focuses on automation test on Web, Performance, and API. It isn’t that specific though. Meanwhile, Bukalapak has tons of automation test for Web, microservices/ API, Android, IOS, and performance testing.”

This Institut Teknologi Del graduate told us that automation test technology is booming in the software testing field. When a company wants to change something in its platform (say, website, mobile web, Android, and IOS), the technology will help the company to reduce testing time and risk of errors.

“At Bukalapak, we always test all the product functions, both the existing and new ones, prior to the release to ensure no system errors. Back then, it took us around 24 hours to do it manually. It increased our cost too!”

“On the contrary, the automation test creates a testing script that will reduce the time process. We only need to run the script in a computer and it will provide us with the result whether or not there’s an error. It only takes 30 minutes to examine all the features functions! Imagine, how much money and time we’re able to cut down with this technology,” he continued.

Long before the technology was implemented, Bukalapak had taken a lot of time to release its features. It had also experienced a very high frequency of down and emergency release. Now, thanks to this technology, Bukalapak is able to deliver dozens of new features or changes at a very rapid pace every single day and support its users better.

“Without automation test, we will receive a lot of complaints from our users, including failures in transaction and product uploading,” he said.

Besides the automation test, Lamhot and his team have also created significant innovation, one of them is utilizing a testing script and Telegram Bot to speed up Bukalapak’s web release process to the production stage. In the future, the team aims to accelerate testing script execution on the web, Android, and IOS. They also want to improve the coverage of testing automation VS manual testing on those platforms. Meanwhile, they continuously improve their understanding of product test and how to reduce the number of error in the app or software.

Now that he has a book and enjoys his job at one of Indonesian unicorn, Lamhot said that he’s quite satisfied with his achievements.

“However, my journey doesn’t stop here. After writing my first book, I realize that there are many rooms for improvement in terms of writing technique, content, and topic. I really hope that I can write another book in the future. A better book to share,” he expressed his hope.

To engineers and IT graduates out there, Lamhot advised to always be responsive in times of emergency, independent, curious in learning new things, and confident in working certain task.

If you think you have those traits, then you might be the one we’re looking for! Click here to see our web career be a part of our team!