Test Inn: Testing As a Career

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Testing As a Career

Here's the communication I had (with some alterations) some months back with a newbie to testing, he asked me to help starting his career in testing field at STC. I am sharing it here with a belief that it might help my local testing community however these are just common steps one should take to start.

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I strongly discourage people getting into testing field with reasons like not getting another job or its the most simplest job on earth... but I believe you aren't from one of them [wish I am not wrong :)]
One more thing... I am not amongst professional trainers; the category in which bucks are charged for sharing every single moment [may be someday i will be:)] but just wanted to help our local testing community in any way I could...!

Anyways, lets scratch the things...

1- Mr. Ahmed Mubbashir at STC gave a very good startup tip for you to start reading some good testing professionals blogs, you can have a very good real time scenarios insight by going through that blogs.

2- Testing is not like Mathematics which you need to learn any kind a formulae for.. its a part of everyone's nature i guess; you complain about anything that bugs you (Inspired by James Bach's definition of Bug).
Just jump into it... browse different websites.. Examine their working.. Try uTest for freelance testing... you can also get register with Kasepersky for the very reason.

3- Try learn some basics about testing/QA to get a background knowledge of what testing is all about. Google, wikipedia are best sources believe me. I am jotting some testing terms down here, search 'em n learn 'em; though i am not from 'a tester must learn all testing terminologies by heart' school of thoughts but one needs to understand the terms to speak in favour or against of it.

Black box testing
White box testing
Grey box testing
Unit/Integration testing
Performance/Load/Stress Testing
Usability Testing
Acceptance testing
Security testing
Regression Testing
Software Development Life Cycle

4- Practice, practice n practice hard. As you are not currently working as a testing professional in any organization that's why you have to practice testing at your own.. take any windows application installed at your system n just dwell into it.. try every explorative/destructive action you can make on it. Reckon yourself as an end user of an application.. don't think how an intelligent user will behave while using an application... just be a child - a somewhat sensible child who can remember things and able to drive results from them.

5- Here are some mentors' blogs links that are worth reading:

6- Get to know about what could be an error here (i.e. usability testing).

7- If ever you get yourself out of ideas about how to start test or you stuck-up while testing something; visit this.

8- You asked about some automated tools in your email; i myself worked on Quality Test Professional and Loadrunner... I can somehow guide you using these tools but i strongly believe in manual testing rather than to work like a feeling less n senseless robotic arm. Well you can also Google these terms to get such a wonderful tutorials though I believe you have had.

9- Testing is all about you.. your perception of things and your passion to become a positive vandal. Make reading, practicing and suspecting every single thing you see your habit from now whether it’s an ATM machine, your rooms' furniture setting or any food you are eating right now.

Good luck with the hunt!

|-- Quality lies in the eyes of customer --|