"How did you become a Tester?"
A question I have had to answer many times, mostly after having tried to explain what I do in my role to a non-technical person. I have also been asked this in job interviews and so thought a fitting first post would be in relation to how I got into testing and became a full-time tester.
Towards the end of 2012 I was working for a company doing basic administrative duties whilst considering my career options. I did not plan to get into the admin role and prior to this I was in university finishing off my access course to degree level education when the university fees increased in the UK. This happened on the exact year I had to apply for my degree, so of course I was unable to continue with university but had rent and other living expenses to pay for. I was really frustrated at the time and started looking for jobs to cover expenses. I then got a call for the admin role mentioned above and accepted the role. Back to the end of 2012 and the company I was working for had some serious financial issues and they had to let me go. As 2013 came in, I started to apply for roles again and I was offered a role as first line support administrator for a small start up company. The role involved answering calls and offering support for the web applications the company had developed/sold. A few months into the role and I soon started to receive a lot of support requests following product deployments in which customers would mention the aspects of the applications that had broken following a fix or maintenance/update. After a good few of the complaints, the Directors were discussing the need for getting a tester. I sat near the recruitment team and overheard them setting the requirements for the role. The Directors then asked me to run some basic checks/tests after each product release and raise any issues before the clients find them (risky, I know!)
I would then try to put myself in the end user's shoes and run some basic scenarios on the tools and would always find issues. I then started to research online, common issues found in web applications and tried to apply these techniques when testing the applications. I would send off my bug reports in the form of spreadsheets to the lead and only developer who would then fix them in production!
Upon seeing my bug reports the Directors then offered me the role of a Tester in their company on the condition that I attended a Software Testing course and passed the exam, to become ISTQB qualified. I agreed and signed up to the next available course and purchased a book that would help prepare me for the course and exam. ('Software Testing: An ISTQB-ISEB Foundation Guide' which can be found on Amazon)
The course took place over the duration of three days with there being an exam on the third day. I found the course to be excellent for me as it covered the basics of testing and really helped develop the mindset I should have for testing, as well as basic principles. Unfortunately due to the size of the company I was working at, and the nature of the products developed there, I would say about 60% of the theory in the book would not be applied at the workplace however, with that said I did pass the exam on the third day and was very happy, and ready to pursue my new role as a tester. I worked for this company for around 7 years and brought a lot of the principles of testing into the company, changing/amending existing processes, bringing testing as a key part of the delivery process. It took time, and a relatively lengthy company presentation to change the thoughts and ideas in the company but I enjoyed every moment of it. I can honestly say I really enjoy what I do. The company had also hired an apprentice in 2015 and I trained him up from scratch and now he has moved on to better things as a, you guessed it, Software Tester! Even though he originally joined as an IT apprentice! Something I am very proud of.
Since then, I joined a larger company, which had around 50+ testers. They were a much larger company and worked closer to the Agile/Continuous Integration workflows. It was during this role I started to change a few of my opinions on specific aspects of testing such as the need/importance of test plans, test cases and test automation (end to end testing). Those opinions will of course be published and each of my posts is definitely subject to change.
Moving forward, I am immersing myself into the community more, and with some great help from coaches such as Matthew Parker and all of the amazing guys from Ministry of Testing, the Evil Tester and many more! I hope to build on my technical abilities and continue to grow in the field with the goal of eventually giving back and helping other testers become established, gaining confidence in their fields.
Thank you for taking the time to read! Please let me know your thoughts and how you got into testing! via email or Twitter @webtesthub
All the best!
James
