Learn Software Testing and Automation Testing

Question

I have been working as Developer(Java/Grails) since 3 years, I would like to switch to Testing specially Automation testing. I would like to ask for some help. I just cannot yet decide what to refer for Testing, and how to be a proper tester? Please provide some tips, readings, links to blogs, etc. To help me get started on how to learn proper testing (from basics of SQA, manual testing and than higher level) and moreover how to move into automation testing. I am totally new to this field, if anyone of you can shoot out some nice advises that would be great as well.

Hopefully, I will get better idea and will be able to make good choice. Looking forward to your responses.

Answer 1

First, it's good to have some vocabulary:

• The ISTQB Guide can help you with that. I recommend reading the Chapter 1.
• If you are not familiar with the agile mindset, a fast reading for the is also the ISTQB Agile Guide. But for a deep dive, the Agile Testing book is excellent.

Now, about testing engineering, I recommend the following blog posts and videos:

Test Engineering:

• What Exploratory Testing Is Not | Part 1 of 5 (Worth read all five)
• A Tester’s Commitments
• Exploratory Testing 3.0
• General Functionality and Stability Test Procedure (Paper from 2000, where James Bach (follow this guy on Twitter) shows his process for testing the Windows OS using exploratory testing)
• Understanding exploratory testing
• Testing oracles - HICCUPPS
• A Test is a Performance
• Testing != test execution
• Open Lecture by James Bach on Software Testing
• James Bach on testing in an agile software development team.

Regarding Automation, you will discover that Selenium is the most used tool at the moment. Given you have a strong background in programming and the fact that tutorials are technology dependent, I'll link more general resources.

• Selenium guides for Page Objects
• How To Create a Test Automation Framework Architecture With Selenium
• Page Object Pattern, Martin Fowler
• BDD/Cucumber
  • http://martinfowler.com/bliki/GivenWhenThen.html
  • https://cucumber.io/docs/reference
  • https://lostechies.com/joeybeninghove/2010/06/01/cucumber/

Here you can find a small automation suite (using Cucumber and other small libraries to implement the Page Object Factory) that I wrote for a Edx-like education platform. It can give you a taste of all the pieces of an automation suite. https://github.com/JoaoGFarias/OpenRedu/tree/cucumber_integration/features

Along with the preparation, practice makes the tester. If you are not able to practice in your company, the LibreOffice has a great QA community (both manual and auto).

Answer 2

When you choose the job, do not stick with Position like Software Developer, Software Tester, Project Manager, Business Analyst, etc.

You should start with "What kind of job that you would like to work?".

Do you prefer to work mostly on your own or you would like to work as a Team? Do you want to have chance to speak with people? Do you want to work more on analysis rather than execution? Do you want to work under proper rules and regulations Or you prefer flexibility?

Some of Characters and Situations those are required to be successful in Software Quality career are:

Keen to learn If you love to learn. Software Quality is a big world for you.

Easy to understand complex stuffs We need to understand the application first before we could do proper testing. And we need to be able to understand things very fast due to time and resources constraints.

Attention to Details We can't ignore small things and let it pass our eyes. We need to be able to catch anything first - then decide whether to take action on it. You need your high performance radar to do the job.

Continuous Improvement Mindset Quality is all about Continuous Improvement. We need to keep being better and better on What we do and How we do it.

Communication You would need to talk and present a lot. Not only one in your QA Team but other stakeholders like Developer, Business Team, Customer, Project Manger, Architecture,...

Make thing tangible Quality is not that tangible. How to explain whether Software under test has good quality?

We will need to work with a lot of data and information and be able to provide adequate information to the team to make decision base on fact and number not on feeling.

Work well under pressure There will be always pressure. Can you stay productive under various circumstances?

Dynamic Environment Situation will change everyday. What will you do when nothing may not going as planned.

Flexibility Nobody can have it all. Project Manger, Customer, Developer, QA, Stakeholders are all want something different. Can you be flexible enough on your stand point of quality to "Deliver the BEST out without COMPROMISE"? This is huge challenge and it's always fun.

The real question may be not "Why should I go for testing instead of developing?"

It should be "Is Software Testing be the right job for me?"

For me, YES. After 10++ years, I still happy about it and learn new things everyday.

Good luck.