Introduction

I am an incoming fourth year Software Engineering student with a minor in Business Economics. This page documents a summary of my third co-op work term at ecobee, including information about the company, a summary and review of my goals for the work term and a description of my role. I worked as a Test Developer from May 2019 - August 2019. I learned a lot in this work term and achieved many of my goals and much more, so I am excited to share my experience with you here.

About ecobee

I had the pleasure of working at ecobee, a Canadian home automation company that makes smart thermostats and light switches for home and commercial use. The company headquarters is in Toronto, Canada where all the research and development for the product is done. I was on the Admin Portal team. When Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) receive support calls from customers, they utilize Admin Portal to look up details regarding the customer’s device so they can help customer’s diagnose issues with their device. The Admin Portal allows CSRs to be effective at their job, as they can look up details about a customer’s device, modify any settings for the customer’s preference or look at runtime data from their HVAC systems to diagnose problems with the device or HVAC.

Job Description

As a Test Developer on Admin Portal I was expected to contribute to testing and verifying features that came into QA. I was also responsible for contributing to the automated test suites, writing UI tests for the front end and API tests for the backend and service layer. All our automated testing was written in Python. I was also monitoring and analyzing the automated tests that ran overnight on our Jenkins builds, looking into any tests that were failing and fixing them by updating test cases or test data. I also participated in regression testing for any releases we had. Towards the end of my term, I had the opportunity to contribute to the front end development for our Reports feature, getting to work in Javascript and React which I used for the first time. Admin Portal worked with many other teams at ecobee as we had to integrate their services into the portal.

Goals

1. My goals for the 8 month work terms includes:

2. Become proficient and comfortable in Python

3. Effectively communicate with team members to resolve issues and conflicts

4. Do a presentation to become comfortable speaking in front of others

5. Do a presentation to become comfortable speaking in front of others

6. Become well researched on a new technology/practice/tool that will make a major contribution to QA Workflow

I was effectively able to achieve all of my goals this work term thanks to my mentor, manager and awesome team. I had the opportunity to write a test suite for the front end and back end end-to-end tests in Python as well as contribute to code reviews for our end-to-end tests. I worked with my team to communicate any bugs or issues with features that I was verifying. I was able to work on my oral communication goal by doing numerous presentations. I had the opportunity to do multiple demos in our team’s bi-weekly sprint reviews, I hosted an exploratory testing workshop with my team, as well as doing a demo to show our team how our Python end-to-end tests are set up. My last goal was accomplished through coming up with a way to automate testing for our Reports feature as well doing an exploratory workshop for our team to introduce exploratory testing and test charters to our team’s workflow.

Conclusions

My experience at ecobee has been very valuable in furthering my career goals, technical skills and knowledge as well as my interpersonal skills. From getting extensive experience working in a language that I had minimal experience with before. I even got experience contributing to front-end development as I picked up a story for a front end feature as well as contributed to writing unit tests for another feature. Getting this experience in development was great and allowed me to think about future career plans differently. Overall, my work term at ecobee was an enriching experience and I really admire the company’s vision and culture. Finally, the communication, teamwork and problem solving skills, as well as the newfound confidence I gained from working at PerkinElmer is something that I will carry with me for the rest of my career. I couldn't be more grateful for the amazing learning experience these last 8 months have been.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank everyone on the Admin Portal team that gave me so many opportunities to learn. Also thanks to everyone in the QA Web chapter where I learned a lot about effective quality assurance practices and in depth about exploratory testing in the QA book club. Special thanks to my mentor JZ who answered all 10 million questions I would have and worked extensively with me to help me achieve my work term goals and so much more! I also want to give big thank you to Guelph Co-op and Career Services for allowing me to have this opportunity, with a special thanks to computing advisors Laura Gatto (who came by for a visit!) and Kate McRoberts. Last, but definitely not least, a big thank you to academic advisor Greg Klotz for reading through the work reports of myself and many others