Project Management

Articles

Hand holding a light bulb in front of a sunrise 6 Unexpected Career Tips for Thinking Testers

Of course getting training, practicing the skills of testing, moving into the right product line, and learning are all necessary for testers to grow their careers. But when Jon Hagar asked himself what helped him grow as a thinking tester, he came up with some ideas that are more off the beaten path. Consider these six tips and your future will be bright.

Jon Hagar's picture Jon Hagar
A developer and a tester looking at each other warily Examining Cross-functionality Bias on Software Development Teams

Cross-functionality means having all the necessary people and skills on one self-organizing team. Unfortunately, the execution of cross-functionality is often biased. The main traps we fall into are misunderstanding the value of specialization, hero worship, and not “walking the cross-functional talk” as organizations. Let’s examine each of these pitfalls in the hope that your teams may avoid them.

Natalie Warnert's picture Natalie Warnert
Desktop computer with monitoring software on the screen, photo by Jakob Owens 7 Ways Monitoring Can Help You Be a Better Tester

Monitoring makes your testing work easier, helps you manage certain biases you may have, and lets you learn a lot about the product, users, and even your own processes. Here are seven concrete benefits testers get from monitored data that you can use to convince your team to implement monitoring—as well as realize for yourself.

Lina Zubyte's picture Lina Zubyte
Hand holding up a light bulb Learning without Asking: Breaking into a New Testing Field

If you're first getting into software testing, or if you've started a new job testing in a different industry, you probably have a lot of questions—about terms and jargon, expectations, requirements, and more. Hopefully your new team will answer some of them, but if you feel like you keep bugging them, there are ways you can learn and discover on your own.

Laura Oniga's picture Laura Oniga
Dashboard on a computer showing test data results, photo by Carlos Muza Reporting Automated Test Results Effectively

The modern iterative software development lifecycle has developers checking in code to version control systems frequently, with continuous integration handling building and running automated tests at an almost equally fast rate. This can generate an enormous amount of test data. Here’s how you can ensure you are reporting results effectively across your team and realizing all the benefits of that information.

Ajeet Dhaliwal's picture Ajeet Dhaliwal
Icon of a dial showing good system performance Measuring the Performance of Your Operations Center

Many organizations have problems with consistently tracking and measuring system outages. Issues aren't logged, admins make changes to systems without going through change management, and a high number of issues turn out to be recurring problems. Implementing a performance measurement process calculates system reliability and can help you improve consistency.

Nels Hoenig's picture Nels Hoenig
Arrow pointing left Shifting Testing Left Is a Team Effort

There is a lot of talk in the testing world about shifting left. Basically, “shift left” refers to moving the test process to an earlier point in the development process, independent of the development approach. This article explores a case in which shift-left has been applied, and the lesson is that shifting left cannot be achieved by testers alone—it must result from a team effort.

Man in a suit reading the Business section of a newspaper Getting Started with Business Intelligence Testing

There’s a bit of hype in terms such as business intelligence, data analytics, and data mining. In testing terms, though, it means working with scripts and databases, often without traditional GUI interaction. But core testing skills—analysis, synthesis, modeling, observation, and risk assessment—will still help you go far in business intelligence testing.

Albert Gareev's picture Albert Gareev
Icons for education and continuous learning To Be a Good Tester, Just Do What No One Else Can

If you want to have a successful career in testing—and maybe even get beyond the day-to-day at the individual level, and improve the team or division—all you need to do is things no one else can. That means staying ahead as the industry moves on, which takes an intense and continuous investment in learning and practicing new things. Here are some suggestions for what that could look like.

Matt Heusser's picture Matt Heusser
Desktop with CRM software dashboards Lessons Learned in Testing CRM Software

CRM systems manage a company’s business relationships, including customers’ data, information, and interactions, so there’s a lot that can—and should—be tested. Viktar Sachuk talks about his experience in testing CRMs to provide some tips for dealing with the trickiest parts of CRM testing, specifically focusing on some preparatory measures, functional testing, integration testing, and test automation.

Viktar Sachuk's picture Viktar Sachuk

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