A Tester Is For Life - ebook with testers' thoughts

Excellent ebook with testers' opinions, this is the link.

Some of my favorite paragraphs are below.

It is essential to notice that everybody suggests more reading, more reading and more reading. It is not possible to evolve as a tester without lots of reading books, blogs, magazines and lots of testing. But just lots of testing is not enough .....................

Alex

What’s the biggest challenge facing Testing currently? 

According to me, the biggest challenge facing the testing industry is : Test cases replacing human brains. Management feels that test cases will solve the problem. If a defect is missed, add it to the test suite. The vicious circle continues. And finally, testers are bored

What’s the biggest challenge facing Testing currently? 

I’ve a feeling that testers have given up the passion to learn something new. There are exceptions, but the majority of testers I met here in my place are not interested in reading blogs and writing one themselves. They are just doing testing because their employer wants them to do it!

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made when testing? 

Working 36 hours straight without sleep trying to finish testing and make the release/production date.  And this was after working 8 weeks straight putting in 60-70 hour weeks.  Because I was tired I missed a last minute change and bug in the application, and when it got out in the real world it caused the application to corrupt data.  Thus we didn’t have a lot of Jim Hazen
www.softwaretestingclub.com happy customers on our hands, the press ate us alive for it, and management was breathing down my neck asking why this was missed.    The lesson I learned is that you cannot kamikaze yourself and at the same time be effective in your job.  Working insane hours will only lead to mistakes and defects escaping to the wild.  I didn’t push back on the deadline and say we needed a few more days to finish.  I put a big ‘S’ on my chest thinking I was Superman when in reality it only stood for ‘Stupid man’.  It’s a mistake I have not repeated the rest of my career .

What’s the biggest challenge facing Testing currently? 

Commoditization.  There has always been a mindset that Testing is not a ‘skilled’ profession (or a profession at all), and that anyone can do it.  This has become worse with outsourcing and off shoring of the work.  There are too many people using it as a way to ‘get in’, and companies (both client and provider) that see it as a job that doesn’t need the same skills and calibre of people as development.    The fact is you need people that are highly skilled and experienced to do the job effectively, and economically.

What’s the biggest mistake you’ve ever made when testing? Trying to please your boss and accept his demand for making a release-recommendation statement. If you as a tester and/or test manager are the only person who has to judge over Go or No-Go, then you will probably be the only person blamed for either delaying a release or getting held responsible for a bug that slipped through. The best approach I have experienced was at a company where the complete team, BA, DEV and Testing was involved in the decision.

How to improve the software testing craft? 

Seek out new knowledge. Read. Learn. Talk to other testers. Try new things. Start a blog 

How to improve the software testing craft? 

Don’t be afraid to switch jobs frequently in your early career.  You will gain a greater variety of skills faster,  plus get a clearer picture of what you are looking for in your career.  Once you figure out what you love to do and are good at, then you can start specializing.   

What is the most valuable “tool” you use to aid your testing? 

One valuable tool I’m discovering at the moment is the value of coaching and teaching others as a tool to deepening your understanding.   I’m starting to think that perhaps coaching and mentoring testers is an essential tool in a testers toolkit. 

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