Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Why testers don't get professional treatment in some organizations.

Are you a professional tester?

If you read quality assurance-related articles in your spare time to improve your testing skills, you will become a small (and want to grow) engineer identified as a professional tester.

Look for the answer in the mirror

To be honest, whether we are not regarded as professionals, we do not give priority to acting like professional testers.

Based on my limited experience, wherever I see testers taking their work seriously and trying to improve their wisdom, I also see how they are respected and how their work is appreciated, thanks to the value it brings to the Organization.

So when it comes to this:

What are the 10 main reasons why you are not a professional tester?

# 1. You don't think testing is a technical specialty, so you won't even try to understand the code behind the product!

If you are engaged in software development, you should at least know something about software engineering. As a tester, you need to be able to read the code to analyze your product and understand how changes and fixes affect it and cause other errors. If you don't want to write, you can still leave without writing any code, but as long as you don't read the code, you'll miss the input that is important to the whole testing process.

two。 You will not participate in this process until you build according to development and tell "go test".

In theory, we want to start with the rest of the team during the requirements gathering and analysis phase. But in fact, we provided almost no input until we developers looked for the first version of feedback on its functionality.

Why does this continue to happen? Most testers would say that this is because it is a "vicious circle" that becomes the last link in the development chain; when "others" start planning, we are always very busy with testing.

But in fact, if you can't spend two hours a day in a functional design meeting, it means you're a bad time manager. It also means that the only reason you didn't participate in the development process before is because you didn't make it a priority; or in other words, because you didn't want to!

3. Your only interaction with the customer is that your support team asks you to reproduce the error in this field.

Part of the job description is to test the product according to the way the product is used on site and catch errors that are important to the user after the product is released.

In fact, your job is to be a customer advocate on the development team. Plan to test and set up the environment according to its work behavior. You also need to provide functional feedback based on their needs and constraints.

If this is the case, how do you simulate on-site work and represent your users if you don't know them? When was the last time you visited the user to learn how he or she used your product? Can you really understand the work they do on your system and the limitations of their working environment? I guess the answer is no.

Go and visit some clients. Until you know and know your users, you will continue to do a bad job as a tester.

4. Risk management can only be carried out in the context of life insurance.

There are a few simple facts in the test; perhaps the most trivial is that "no tester has enough time to test everything." This is where basic risk management works, helping us to prioritize our work so that we can understand what needs to be tested first and what can be assumed based on the results of other tests.

Every tester knows that some of his products are riskier; the team's work is always delayed due to unplanned and unplanned situations. As testers, our job is to understand these areas and alert the team at all stages of the project. You should try to clarify existing or potential problems that affect the product. Help the team to set realistic goals and achieve them on time and on budget.

5. You have no plans to increase the value of the test.

Testing majors are uncharted in many ways. As a tester, there is no way to develop yourself professionally, and these improvements are not easy or will occur soon. Therefore, unless you decide to invest seriously in your development process, and only after you know how to achieve this goal, can you really improve your testing skills and the value you provide to your organization.

How did you achieve this goal?

First map your strengths and weaknesses as a tester, then determine which areas you want to develop (which is also valuable to your organization), and finally look for ways to develop these skills.

One thing is certain: if you leave it to the opportunity, or let another tester lead you during his personal development, it will be impossible to improve.

6. You think your main job is to write and run predefined test case scenarios

In addition to running script tests, there are many other things:

Provides feedback on application design.

Analyze the risks of your current development plan and project.

Provide informal feedback during the development phase.

Develop an automation framework to help your developers maintain product stability as they work.

Run the tests, but definitely not just the ones you write at hand.

Analyze the test results and other information you can get to learn more about the status of the product.

Provide feedback on the process.

The value of your work goes far beyond performing test steps and setting them to pass or fail!

7. Automation (and scripting) is an advanced science that you will work on in the future-in your spare time.

STOP put forward excuses why not automate!

Automation is not a magic pill or a solution to all the problems faced by testers, it's just a sales lie from many tool vendors. However, sometimes using scripts or tools to do some dirty work can make it more efficient and save you time.

The problem is that some testers think they don't have enough technology to do this, so they choose not to use automation or scripting to improve their tests. In a sense, it's like hitting a stone or lighting a flame with a stick, refusing to use a lighter and saying it's easier for you.

8. When you stand on top of yourself, you do most of the tests.

A good tester is a humble tester. We need to know how to provide feedback and, more importantly, how to get feedback from teammates and peers.

Many testers are frustrated when team members, especially programmers, provide unsolicited feedback on their tests, or when they query for unfound errors or tests that have not been run. Many times, there are good reasons for all these "mistakes". We just need to stay calm and share the information, but many testers see these questions as personal questions about their professional integrity. and respond in a loud tone or harsh language.

Just as you need to know how to report errors and provide negative feedback to the project team, you need to know how to get constructive criticism from your peers.

No one wants you to be perfect, but they want you to be professional about your mistakes, learn from them and get feedback from the team.

9. You will not track your expertise and the areas that need to be improved next

One of my best managers in the past has talked about our personal "virtual toolbox" as a skill that each of us carries with us and uses when needed.

Do you know the tools carried in the toolbox?

Which tools need to be improved or updated?

What tools do you need and what tools you might want to improve the quality of your work?

There is no doubt that testing is a process, and without the appropriate tools (virtual and real), you will not be able to create the desired product.

10. Your only idea of a career path is to become a manager or continue to pursue another career

Some people enter the testing phase because they think it's a good way to program. Others do this because they don't know what the test is, and it sounds cool to "play" with the app all day. After all, how hard is it, right?

Some of them may end up being good testers. But most of them end up feeling depressed, and they can stop testing and start doing what they really want to do. Although others don't understand the real challenge of testing, they think the only way to move forward is to start managing.

It is true that there are challenges and rewards for managing test teams, but there are also countless disciplines to conquer that have nothing to do with management, which may bring you more challenges and greater rewards (absolutely no headaches! )

My point is that if you always want to do something else instead of focusing on how to test better, then you can't do it professionally. So think about whether you're in the right place, or whether you should just look for something else.?

Do you want a major? First of all, regard testing as a professional!

Looking at these ten points from 20000 feet, I think the line that connects them is a call to change the general way we test.

The first step is to start thinking about testing as our major.

Once we have absorbed the first step, the second step is to see what we lack to be better testers. What areas should we develop? How do we deal with our work and our relationships with customers and team members? What can we do now to improve the value of our work?

The third and final step (at least for this short approach) is to plan in advance how to improve and realize that as a major, we need to learn a lot before thinking about our masters or experts (if there is such a thing.).

It is important to realize that the change needs to come from within, not from some God-given decree or from the title next to the name in our email signature.

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