Posts

Less Technical Career Options for Testers

Image
Some software Testers may get tired of a long career in testing or do not want to pursue a career technical career, such as becoming an automation specialist, or a developer. Such software testers can go on to become product owners, business analysts, scrum masters, project (program or product) managers, or engineering managers. There are many other non-technical roles to choose from, but here I will focus on the most common ones. Let us explore these non-technical career options and dive into the details of each of them. Final remark before we go on: even though these roles seem non-technical, each of these roles benefits if the tester has a technical background, and most contemporary testers do.  Product Owners As a tester often you would think about in what way would a customer use a product, and how a particular functionality could be made easier for the customer to use. As a product owner, you would be able to influence those kinds of decisions - after all the product owner is the
Post a Comment
Read more

Testing an application you're unfamiliar with - where to begin?

Image
Very often, when applying to jobs you may get a task to test an app you're not familiar with, or you might not know who to start testing the product on your new job. In these situations, you can try to use heuristics (general rule of thumb) if you are unfamiliar with the application's domain. For the issues you do find, try to think about the from the user's perspective: is something blocking (like login or registration being completely broken) you completely from accessing the rest of the app? Is an issue annoying, but you can work around it? Is it a minor glitch or a text typo? To help conceptualize this approach you can use Personas-based testing. Here is a list of some techniques that can be helpful for testing most apps. For a lot of apps, you can use the CRUD approach to testing: Can you create resources, like registering for an account? Can you read data, like opening website pages without issues? Can you update data, such as changing your username? Can you delete
1 comment
Read more

ISTQB Certification: Why do you need it and how to get there?

Image
The International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) offers a range of certifications for software testers. The important thing to note is that the CTFL (Certified Tester Foundation Level) certification is the prerequisite that unlocks all other ISTQB certifications. Getting ISTQB certified can have several benefits, so let’s have a look at the situation. Benefits : Validation of knowledge: The ISTQB certification exams test a candidate's knowledge of the software testing process, including test design, test management, and test techniques. By passing the exam, the candidate demonstrates that they have a certain level of knowledge and understanding of software testing. It’s a good way to show that you know the terminology and possessed the required theoretical knowledge of software testing. Career advancement: Many companies require or prefer candidates with ISTQB certification for software testing positions. The certification can help a candidate stand out in a competit
Post a Comment
Read more

Bloggers Club December 2022 - Biggest wins in 2022 and 2023 Trends

Image
This year has been pretty active for me and there were a few achievements that I'm very happy about. The biggest thing I achieved was the fact that I was able to get my stage fright under more control. I practiced the speeches I delivered at conferences beforehand, and made sure I also recorded myself while rehearsing which to me was the most helpful of all things I've tried. Delivering your practiced speech in front of a mirror can also be a good idea, but a recording allows you to listen and analyze your speech and see what can be improved. This year I spoke at two in-person conferences (long overdue, thanks to Covid) and one online conference, and one in-person meetup. Here's a detailed round-up of what I was up to, first of all, conferences: TestBash Careers - How to market yourself better as a software tester Bosnia Agile Day - Modern Testing Principles - Natural Evolution of Agile Testing Testival - Keynote Why Community Matters, Philosophy and Drive QA Global Summit&
Post a Comment
Read more

Bloggers Club November 2022 — Three things that have helped me demonstrate the value I bring to a team

Image
How come it’s not so obvious what we do, how we help a team/customers, and the value we bring? The work presented by the developers is more tangible, the same goes for many other professions such as designers, where they have a visual output of their work. For testers, this is different, since testing is not that visible to the customer, or sometimes the management. Testers can shed light on their activities by advocating quality and being proactive communicators - try speaking to everyone in their own language. For example, developers will wholeheartedly agree that good software architecture has a direct positive impact on the app's testability and overall quality - a well-architectured app will have a lot fewer bugs to find in the first place. And when dealing with managers, translate everything into the language of money. How much will the company lose, if a certain feature doesn't get the (minimum) testing needed after we have assessed and accepted the risks we discover. Wh
1 comment
Read more

What can software testers put in their portfolio website?

Image
I recently came across a forum topic about a QA portfolio and what it should look like. Since i t is a bit more demanding for us testers than it is for designers and developers, to have presentable work for our portfolios. They just put work samples of apps they designed and developed, and for us testers we need to get a bit more creative: If you have your own blog or write articles for others you can showcase those on your portfolio Any public speaking activities you should display as well, such as meetups, conferences, workshops, etc. Also, if you are a volunteer or a member of any testing communities I’d show that too. If you know automation or are learning it, you can include links for GitHub repositories with your automation code - just try to add a bit of variation, do some UI, and some API automation, and play around with different frameworks to demonstrate that you are a keen learner. You can get even more original and add samples of how you perform regular QA tasks, a sample
Post a Comment
Read more

Bloggers Club October 2022 - Trick or treat - Irreproducible Bug

Image
 Let me tell you a spooky story about an irreproducible bug. It took a place a long time ago, before seven companies, and seven projects, there stood an irreproducible bug! At the time this happened I was working on a fairly large enterprise project,. The whole system was made up of various applications, written in a few different languages, over time, by many different teams.  The core defect was a bit of an edge case, where just users with certain country codes would not get eCommerce promotional emails sent to them. It was a wild goose chase, I was the first to investigate the bugs, as I was in the application support team at the time, about 20 hours per week. I tried in different environments, but to no avail - I could not figure it out. Used a test harness to trick the dates, as it was a kind of email that gets sent 24 hours after registration. I got very stubborn about it and spent about 4 hours without getting up from my chair, trying to figure out the root cause. Why was this e
Post a Comment
Read more