Bas Hamer is the founder of Possum Labs an aggregate of years of experience building testing systems across industries. The Possum Lab offers companies a way to create automated tests in Alexa-like English that inside or outside the company to understand what you have built or are about to create.

What exactly does Bas Hamer do? (1:39)Bas explains that he always tries to automate himself out of a job.He takes what he learned over three different customer implementations of building custom test automation systems and turns that into a product that people could use by themselves.Over time, Bas found that different customers kept asking him to build the same system which is why he turned from staff augmentation into the idea of a public business.His main goal is to figure out how he can what he’s been doing, remove himself and enable the customers to do it themselves.People can then build their own test automation suites.

What does your process actually look like? (2:51)Bas start by comparing his process of learning to Alexa.People know that Alexa doesn’t really understand English, but they know what English words Alexa understands and compensates for this when talking to Alexa.His company helps people to describe their test cases in Alexa-like English which is then interpreted by a computer, making it easier for people who are not developers or programmers.They remove all the abstraction and make it easier by using English that people are more familiar with.This provides people with an interface they can use that will leverage their skill set without them feeling they have to become a developer.

Let’s talk about the use cases for this kind of technology (5:30)People can describe in very clear and precise English how their software should work, sell the software and then realize they have to test it because they have to maintain it.You can map from English to code and then execute that code against a website or web application.Behind the scenes, you have a bunch of rules that you can configure how to understand the application.Just like a person can describe how their products work over the phone, you can describe in English, how you want to interact with the website or application which then gets mapped into code.Essentially what you are doing is creating test cases to find out if your workflows are working.

Describe the moment you decided to build out the software to be customer facing rather than you being the consultant. (11:01)A few years ago, Bas started working at a company who wanted him to be a developer.He described the system he built and they offered him more money if he could build the same kind of system for them.Because of this, Bas doubled his income and had extra money to run more experiments and employ an assistant.Next, he built out his internal toolkit to get some leverage to implement the system faster.Because people were still intimidated by the complex Visual Studio, he decided to build a user interface for his system.

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