Few organizations are good at letting their software testers become skilled at exploratory software testing skill. Most of the time software testers are used just like a crash test dummy ,in a car crash simulation. Now what does this mean and how can a software tester build his skills and career in the field of software testing?
After having been to an MNC Quality Day event, where their India head said the following, “We can know about the culture of the company, by the way they treat their QA Engineers“. We can understand that most organizations treat their QA engineers at crash test dummies, by just throwing over coded modules every few days to see if the code sticks to the wall or falls apart. The reasons for this kind of situation could be that, most organizations do not have a full understanding of how Quality needs to built into the product, by the entire company and not just hold the quality team responsible for any major issues. So if one tracks how accountability of an major issues is handled in a organization, one can understand the priorities of that company.
Hence Professional Software Testers need to look at not only their own skill level as professional, they also will have to look at their organization and see if they are willing let testers develop their skills in exploratory testing, so that they are able to learn about creating Charters for testing sessions. Testers also need to follow some of the top professional testers in India and the world. These thought leaders and top testers are pushing for the spread of skilled exploratory testing, where testers can learn and prove their skills in testing a software applications and not be used as crash test dummies for companies to just check(not test) for defects.
So how can you prevent becoming a “Crash Test Dummy” software tester? by becoming a skilled exploratory tester. So the next question is how to become a skilled exploratory tester? By following the top testers in the world and learning from them. Here are some of the tips to become a skilled exploratory tester.
Books for Skilled Testers
1. Lessons learnt in Software Testing by Cem Kaner, James Bach and Bret Pettichord.
2. Testing Computer Software by Cem Kaner, Jack Falk and Nguyen.
3. The 3 “What if” books by Ajay Balamurugadas.
Thought Leaders in Testing
1. James Bach
2. Micheal Bolton
3. Pradeep Soundararajan
4. Ajay Balamurugadas
5. Rahul Verma
Software Testing Magazines
Online Sessions by Weekend Testing & Pair Learn Present in India by Ajay Balamurugadas. Attending testing events such as BugDeBug in Chennai, Monthly Tester Meetups in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad. And also taking part in testing contests at 99tests, will help testers to go from checking of test cases to becoming a highly skilled software testing professional.
Note: Most of the links are from the blog post How I learn Testing! by Rajiv Meher.
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