Behind the Scenes Part 2 – CTO Gerd Katzenbeisser

Nothing is more important than the end user friendliness and productivity of our solution!

Each line of code, which our highly specialized SAP test automation solution is based on, has been developed by Gerd Katzenbeisser and his development team.

But not only that, the customer contact and therefore the feedback for his development team is his major concern, which is why he participates in PoCs and meetings in order to incorporate the direct feedbacks in the development.

Our blog post today will give you a look behind the scenes at suxxesso Inc. and give our head of development curtain calls!

Before he came to suxxesso, Gerd used to work in a company which developed software for mobile telephone networks optimization. „I leaded the development of a new test automation tool from scratch – whereby the effort for release tests could be reduced from almost a month to 2-3 days.”

„His excellent qualities in technical issues, particularly in diverse development environments and programming languages, made us do everything to hire Gerd as head of our team as soon as possible”, Christian Gaiser says, associate partner of suxxesso Inc.

The development of suxxesso Tool Suite

The enthusiastic developer realized very quickly that the objectives couldn´t be accomplished in the chosen manner till then: „It became quickly apparent that the implementation of the objectives would be very difficult with the existing test automation software and that the maintenance efforts for the test cases would be quite big.”

The first step for today´s suxxesso Tool Suite was taken by developing an individual script language – in order to implement complex test cases in a simple manner which could be executed extremely performant as well.

The development of a graphical interface for creating test scripts followed parallelly this first step. The suxxesso Test Pilot was thus launched. The specialization on SAP interfaces makes it possible to easily trigger the complex input screens through prefab functions.

„The design and development of Data Manager, Test Cockpit and the integration of Solution Manager were important milestones for me.”

„It was always important for me not to recreate the existing functionalities of other solutions but to develop our own approaches – always with the objective in mind to maximize end user friendliness and the productivity”, Gerd Katzenbeisser recounts.

Strategic decisions

In addition to technical skills, the management of a big development department needs soft skills too: „Development meetings can sometimes quite heat up. Important is not to discount the ideas which come up – even if they seem to be wrong at first. This mindset contributed to one of the most important strategic decisions which made the development of Test Cockpit possible in the first place and cleared away the obstacles in development.”, the CTO provides insight into groomings. Appreciative cooperation and allowing opinions in order to evaluate objectively afterwards is one of the roads to success of the passionate beach volleyball player.

Close to our customers

Customer contact is another important and valuable input for his work, which is why you can run into our CTO from time to time in PoCs and testing appointments with potential customers: „One of the most important aspects is the direct contact with our customers. By seeing how they use our software, we can then plan new approaches, features and simplifications in team. Above all, it is extremely motivating to see how positively our tools are embraced – most notably once the customer has got comparisons to other automation tools.”

The shift in permanent home office because of COVID-19 was seamless for Gerd and his team. It came in useful to them that VPN solutions were already tested beforehand and all systems are manageable via these solutions. Holding development meetings online has one benefit in Gerd´s opinion: the discussions are limited more to a factual level than to an emotional one.

And nevertheless, our CTO and his team are looking forward to working together again on-site on further developments of suxxesso Tool Suite.