Introducing Jon Robinson, Provar’s Head of North America
Last year Provar welcomed Jon Robinson to the team. Read on to learn more about Jon’s role as Provar’s Head of North America and find out what he’s working looking forward to this year.
About Jon
Jon has over 24 years of experience in the IT field, with the past 13 years being spent in the Quality Assurance space. With experience ranging from working with small startups to Fortune 500 companies, and everything in between, he has seen a lot of things that work and even more that don’t. Whether it was a single QA team member or multiple teams spread across the globe, Jon has built and led teams that operated in unison with the business and development teams to deliver ever-improving quality.
Prior to joining Provar, Jon was running the QA consulting practice he started in 2017, after leaving his role as Director of QA for HomeAdvisor. He is currently based out of Nashville, TN, where he heads up the North American regional office for Provar.
Welcome to Provar! What are you doing in your new role?
As Provar’s new Head of North America, I am responsible for further expanding Provar’s US presence. This includes building out a team that handles onsite consultation and training, being an escalation point for our North American clients, and delivering demos and POCs to companies interested in Provar. In addition this, I’m also attending many of the fantastic Salesforce and QA conferences and events around the country.
When did you start working in testing?
I’ve been in the QA space since 2006, starting out as a performance test engineer, and then shifting into more of a leadership role in more recent years. I’m pretty passionate about QA and automation, and if you are around me long enough you’ll pick up on that pretty quick!
What do you enjoy most about working in testing?
I get to break things! I have an uncanny ability to cause issues when I start playing with things, and I really enjoy the challenge of trying to find holes that others miss. Seriously…I even managed to do it during my interview process with Provar!
“One of my core tenants is automating wherever you can, but being smart about it. Just because you CAN automate something doesn’t mean you should.”
How important do you think automation is when it comes to a good test strategy?
I think it is incredibly important, and it should be considered one of your tentpole areas of focus when building your strategy out. One of my core tenants that I preach is automating wherever you can, but being smart about it. Just because you CAN automate something doesn’t mean you should.
How did you first hear about Provar?
I heard about Provar when they first began recruiting in Nashville, where I live. Once I saw the product and had the chance to meet the people involved, I was sold. The geek side of me got really excited when I saw the potential for the product, and I am excited to have the chance to be a part of growing it.
“Provar has an amazing group of people working for them globally across all aspects of the company and I feel really privileged to be a part of that.”
What do you think makes Provar special?
The ability to take the typically very complicated concept of automation and let non-technical people create and use it is something that has been the holy grail of automation for a long time. Provar absolutely delivers on that, and we are always finding ways we can make this even easier and more user friendly.
In addition to the tool itself, one of the other things I have come to quickly realize is that Provar has an amazing group of people working for them globally across all aspects of the company and I feel really privileged to be a part of that.
What are you looking forward to in the coming months?
I’m looking forward to seeing some of our awesome planned new features get in front of our users. The team has been working on some ideas which I believe will change the way a lot of organizations do test automation, in ways that will seem like “magic”.
Beyond that, I’m also really excited to help get Provar in front of as many people as possible. We are going to be working hard at making sure people have heard of us, and showing them the things that often result in “Wow!”. I want more Wow’s this year!
“At some point AI will prove to be a viable option when it comes to testing, but we still have a ways to go before we can fully replace actual human eyeballs.”
What is the future of testing?
While I think automation is a very large part of any answer to this question, I think that test strategy is just as important. To me, it is the convergence of these two concepts, so that when you are automating, you are automating where it makes sense, and in a way that enables more efficient and effective testing across other areas. At some point AI will prove to be a viable option when it comes to testing, but we still have a ways to go before we can fully replace actual human eyeballs. In the meantime, I want to make those eyeballs as effective as I possibly can, while improving coverage across the board.