A weekly source of software testing news
ISSUE #28 - August 13, 2017
Someone asked on Slack’s Testers.io community how to learn testing and how hard it is. That question will have highly variable answers depending on one’s starting point. This issue of Tester’s Digest offers pointers to some learning resources I know of, some targeted at newcomers to the testing profession, others of use to seasoned practitioners, and a couple of fun ones in the Off-Topic section.
If Slack is your medium, Testers.io is a thriving community where testers discuss everything from UI automation to JIRA tricks:
This post covers tools worth learning for new testers, including mental heuristics like CRUD, documentation and reporting tools such as mindmaps and diagrams, data generation for test data sets, debugging and monitoring tools, and intros to coding:
https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons/what-tools-should-i-learn
These testing examples are meant to serve as case studies for learning how to test in a manual, exploratory manner. Disclaimer: a couple are videos which I did not watch as I’m a text based learner. The test scenario for LibreOffice is excellent in the way it lays out goals and context for the intended testing, and the test steps, then goes through the setup needed, problems (potential bugs) found, and the conclusion from the testing session. The analysis of Screen Pluck app is equally great; as it’s for a small application, the author builds a mental model, then considers “quality characteristics” also known as -ilities (reliability, usability etc.) and finds additional testing ideas using a SFDIPOT approach which was new to me. He then uses a risk-based methodology to select the most valuable test ideas.
http://thetesteye.com/blog/2014/10/testing-examples/
The triangle problem comes up in software testing books and job interviews. This post offers a thoughtful analysis of test cases for it. As with the above link, I applaud the idea and wish there were more resources like this!
http://startesting.it/triangle-problem/
To touch on the “how hard is it” part of the question about learning to test, this tester puts a time metrics on his skills from the perspective of Deep Work book, thereby ranking testing skills by complexity. It’s a very personal estimate, mine would differ quite a bit, but the approach is interesting.
https://medium.com/mobile-testing/deep-work-as-a-tester-29b5327f0ed2
Areas of education for testers, presented as a mindmap:
http://www.satisfice.com/images/testsyllabus.pdf
Books for testers:
http://www.awesome-testing.com/2017/04/best-software-testing-books.html
Podcasts on software testing:
Who to follow on Twitter for testers:
https://vanwollingen.nl/who-to-follow-on-twitter-for-testers-f02ee01da46f
This is a large and growing set of links to free online learning resources for new and experienced Software Testers. It opens with introduction to testing from James Bach and others, covers testing mindset, test design, exploratory testing and automation, test reporting, Agile methodology, intro to coding, security testing, mobile testing, a comprehensive list of blogs, and more.
https://github.com/PaulWaltersDev/FreeLearningResourcesForSoftwareTesters/
This steps a bit beyond the testing arena, but this DevOps reading list is not to be missed. It has 88 items at the time of this writing, and a good chunk of them touch on QA, testing, risk, safety, and systems thinking.
http://infiniteundo.com/post/158412712773/devops-reading-list#the_list
Learn test automation using Legos (Duplos, the chunky kind for toddlers). Yes, for real. But only in the UK or NZ… too bad. Read the workshop ad, then a participant’s account:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-legoautomation-richard-bradshaw
https://bhagyagdm.wordpress.com/2017/04/14/lego-automation-workshop-by-richard-bradshaw/
Hone testing skills while playing board games:
https://www.stickyminds.com/article/using-games-make-you-better-tester
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