Choosing Quality: The Courage to Try, Create, and Share
Quality isn’t just part of the job, it’s a choice. The choice to say, “We can make this better.” The courage to try something new, explore new tools, and keep learning.
Every QA journey starts there. And when we share what we know, we don’t just grow ourselves, we lift the whole community.
Today, we’re featuring Ravikanth Edamakanti, a Katalon Creator who’s done exactly that. His story is about trying, choosing quality, creating solutions, and giving back. We hope it inspires you to take your next step, whether that’s learning, exploring AI testing, or simply sharing your experience with someone else.
Follow our conversation below 
Q: Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your professional background?
A: I have over 20 years of experience in quality engineering. I started with traditional tools like Selenium, Appium, and earlier in my career. Over the last 6–7 years, my focus has shifted toward low-code/no-code platforms such as Tricentis Tosca, Katalon, and Keysight Eggplant.
More recently, I’ve been exploring quite a number of generative AI-based test automation tools including Katalon Studio Assist. My interest now is heavily focused on how AI can accelerate and optimize test automation.
Q: Where are you based now, and where is your hometown?
A: I’m currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, but I’m originally from India. I even had the chance to visit the Katalon Atlanta office for a webinar and meet Coty, and that was a great experience.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you as a QA professional?
A: My day starts early with calls to my offshore counterparts to review updates, challenges, and statuses. From 9 AM onward, I interact with clients across the 4–5 projects I handle, covering requirements, clarifying gaps, and addressing ambiguities. Afternoons are spent executing deliverables discussed in the morning, whether that’s arranging new resources, stabilizing automation, or creating strategies for test coverage. My role focuses on expanding the team, improving quality deliverables, refining QA processes, stabilizing automation scripts, and supporting offshore teams.
Q: Has automation changed your day-to-day operations?
A: Definitely. Building automation suites has allowed us to support not just QA, but also user acceptance testing (UAT) and business teams, especially in projects where UAT teams are small or unavailable. We can run our regression suites to perform UAT on their behalf.
That said, because our release cycle is usually once a month or once every two months, we’re probably using automation at around 50–60% of its full potential. We don’t need daily CI/CD runs, but automation has significantly improved our test coverage and gives us the flexibility to increase release frequency if needed.
Q: You’ve worked with clients globally. What’s the main difference between working with people in the U.S. and other regions, like India?
A: Honestly, there’s not much difference. Our entire codebase is in a central repository, with seamless integration via tools like GitHub, so location doesn’t create challenges.
We also have a 24/7 productivity model: during U.S. hours, the on-site team manages work, and during offshore hours, the offshore team takes over. QA processes are standardized globally, so every region follows the same guidelines.
Q: Did you choose this career intentionally, or was it accidental?
A: It was intentional. I began as a computer engineer in an engineering platform, but I was always passionate about IT and exploring tools. I naturally tended to spot mistakes while appreciating people’s work, which led me to realize I was drawn to quality assurance.
I’d already worked in the quality department in the chemical engineering field, so moving into software quality felt like a natural transition. Once I made the switch, I received a lot of recognition and knew I’d chosen the right path.
Q: What’s the biggest project you’ve worked on using automation tools?
A: One major project was automating a commercial loan application and an online account automation system.
The loan application was massive with hundreds of fields, complex page structures, and extensive document validation. A single end-to-end test case could take an hour manually. Automating document verification was challenging, but we reached about 80% efficiency.
The online account automation integrated two systems: once an account was opened, we validated the details in the backend core system. This also involved document validation, which we automated successfully.
In both projects, creating page-level reusable functions was key. These allowed us to cover multiple loan types and end-to-end scenarios with minimal extra effort, greatly improving efficiency.
Q: When did you first discover Katalon, and do you think its features could have helped with those big projects?
A: I started using Katalon about 5–6 years ago. The platform has matured significantly since then.
A turning point for me was the introduction of TestCloud which has made it easy to execute tests across multiple browsers and devices, schedule jobs, and manage executions centrally. More recently, Studio Assist has been a great addition, allowing us to quickly generate scripts from natural language prompts and then enhance them with business logic.
Yes, these features would have been very useful in my larger projects.
Q: What’s your favorite Katalon feature?
A: Self-healing, without a doubt. It gives you full control, you can define self-healing levels, set hierarchies, and approve changes before they’re applied.Compared to other tools where you must manually configure self-healing properties, Katalon handles it automatically once you set your considerations. It’s powerful, efficient, and saves a lot of time.
Q: What advice would you give to someone starting their career in software testing today?
A: Start exploring AI-based test automation tools. Generating code is easy now; the real skill is in planning, prompting effectively, integrating AI into your framework, and reducing automation time while maintaining quality.
Q: Do you think automation is always implemented effectively in the industry?
A: Not always. Many organizations underutilize automation or try to automate everything, and even tests they never run, leading to low ROI.
Effective automation requires knowing what should and shouldn’t be automated, and ensuring it will deliver measurable value. Execution, analysis, and strategic planning are critical.
Q: Is there a story that made you feel, “This career is truly for me”?
A: About ten years ago, we worked on an application that upgraded every 3–6 months, constantly changing locators and UI. Back then, using Selenium, we built a fallback framework, what we now call self-healing, so if one property failed, it would try another.
At the time, we didn’t call it self-healing, but realizing we’d implemented something ahead of its time gave me confidence we were on the right path. That experience sparked my ongoing interest in AI and automation innovation, like exploring MCP (Model Context Protocol) and building my own agents with LLAMA to generate and convert natural language prompts into scripts.
Q: If you could choose one thing to automate for maximum value, what would it be?
A: I would automate real user flows from the business team. They know the actual operations inside out, and they execute the real-time scenarios that matter most. Sometimes in QA, we end up automating test cases that real users never touch, giving more weight to low-priority paths and less to the critical ones. Capturing and automating the actual user journeys from business users gives far more value.
Q: What motivated you to join the Katalon Community and contribute so actively?
A: Initially, it was my own exploration of the tool. I liked its combination of no-code and code capabilities, which many tools don’t offer. I began creating Katalon tutorials and YouTube videos, which received great feedback. Eventually, the Katalon team noticed my work and reached out.
In 2024, I was one of the most active contributors, producing around 60–70 Katalon videos. I still get community requests lately, many about enabling and using Studio Assist, so I’ve started creating dedicated courses to help. The recognition from Katalon and the interaction with the community keep me motivated.
Q: Any final message for the community?
A: Things are going well. I’m focused on creating practical learning resources such as short videos, articles, and hands-on examples that help people level up in testing and automation. My suggestion is simple: keep learning consistently and explore how modern AI techniques can support your workflow. The landscape changes quickly, so staying curious and sharing what you discover with others is the best way for the whole community to grow.
Thank you so much Ravi for being such a great mentor!
-The Katalon Community Team
Feeling inspired by Ravi’s story? If you’d like to become a Katalon Creator and share your own testing journey, just reach out! We’re always happy to welcome new voices into our community. 