Ezanne Grobler

iOCO

Adversities are not uncommon in the business world, with organizations often facing challenges that can either make or break them. However, embracing adversity and turning it into an opportunity can help organizations overcome obstacles and thrive. This paper presents a case study of iOCO, a South African test consulting company that embraced adversities and created a test automation learnership to address these.

South Africa is confronted with several social dilemmas because of their apartheid past. Two of these are an exceptional high unemployment rate as well as upskilling the previous disadvantage. In addition to these, iOCO faced a shortage of affordable automation engineers, with the right combination skills, to address client’s needs.

On August 1, 2022, newly appointed learners embarked on a two-month academy journey, followed by a 10-month on-the-job training. The syllabus included fundamentals of software testing and test automaton, several automation tools courses, the principles of DevOps and introduction to ALM tools to mention a  few.

A main lesson learnt from this, when combining challenges, the solution can present itself. By redirecting the focus external, finding solutions to political and social needs, presented a solution to the internal problem as well.

What you will learn

• Don’t look at problems in isolation and try to fix them one by one.
• Focus on the human aspect, not just technology, machine learning, and AI.
• Mentoring and coaching are rewarding and add value, for yourself as well as those around you.