This is the third in a series of articles highlighting speakers at SauceCon 2020. SauceCon brings together the global community of Sauce Labs users and continuous testing experts to learn from each other and level up their automated testing and continuous delivery skills. This year’s event will be held April 27-29 in Austin, Texas, and DevOps.com will be there, broadcasting live.
Software engineer Dylan Lacey works on the Sauce Labs support team, helping customers solve problems and troubleshoot integrations and test failures. And, as an avid home cook, he loves creating and transforming ingredients. 
One area of testing where he sees a need for transformation relates to test naming.
“Working in support means that not only do I see a ton of tests, I get to see a ton of malfunctioning tests,” said Dylan. “Many customers are surprised to learn how much they stand to gain by better identifying and managing tests.”
Dylan explains why this is important.
“There are so many badly named tests that affect so many customers,” explained Dylan. “Test names with massively redundant data. Test names with no identifying information. Tests without names. Tests with super long names. I’ve seen it at every size of enterprise and every level of test complexity, and it causes customer frustration every time.”
At SauceCon 2020, Dylan will attack this issue head-on with his session entitled “What’s in a Name? Metadata for Fun and Profit.” Attendees will come away equipped with practical information about what makes great test names, skills to think more critically about test failures and suggestions for using Tags, Build IDs and custom data to help them organize and share tests.
“Even if attendees leave feeling guilty about their metadata, I hope they’ll be equipped and excited to fix it,” said Dylan.
When he’s not working, Dylan has an impressive list of hobbies and leisure activities. He loves cooking, has a tragic amount of cookbooks and even cooks live on Twitch twice a week. He also keeps bees, makes his own mead and cheese, writes short stories and is an amateur leather worker.
You can hear from Dylan and more than 30 other expert speakers at SauceCon 2020, the fourth annual Sauce Labs user conference. To see a full list of presentations or to register, visit the SauceCon website.
