Tag: online

How to Start a Career in Software Testing

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

<This is a guest post by Kuldeep Rana>

Starting a career in software testing can be rewarding for individuals interested in technology and quality assurance. There are opportunities for growth, including specializing in a particular area, such as automation testing or performance testing, or moving into management positions.

If you are interested in technology and enjoy problem-solving, a career in software testing may
be the right fit for you. Certainly! Here is some advice on how to start a career in software testing:

Introduction to Software Testing

Software testing is a critical part of software development, ensuring that software applications work as intended and meet user requirements. Software testing is a process of evaluating and verifying a software application or system to check whether it meets the specified requirements and performs as expected. The main goal of software testing is to identify defects or bugs in the software and ensure that the software is functional, reliable, and meets user expectations.
There are different types of software testing, and the approach used depends on the specific requirements and goals of the project.

Different Roles of a Software Tester

a. Functional Testing: Functional testing is a type of software testing that verifies whether the software application’s functionality works as intended and meets the specified requirements. It checks the software’s functionality against the requirements and specifications. It verifies that the software performs as expected in different scenarios.

Testing software functionality includes focusing on testing techniques, exploratory and adhoc testing and requires testers to also acquire domain knowledge for their sofwtare.

b. Non-Functional Testing: Non-functional testing is a type of software testing that evaluates the software application’s non-functional aspects, such as performance, reliability, scalability, usability, security, and compatibility. Non-functional testing evaluates how well the software meets non-functional requirements, such as speed, responsiveness, and user experience.

c. Test Automation: This includes focusing on automating aspects of test execution, test data creation and reporting that can help in saving time and improves efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. A test automation expert has knowledge of automation concepts, specialises in tools and CI/CD aspects of testing phases and resources.

Tips to help you start a career in software testing

Gain a powerful foundation in software testing concepts

To become a successful software tester, you need a solid understanding of software testing concepts, such as testing types, methods, and tools. You can begin by reading books on software testing or taking online courses to build your knowledge. Some popular books on software testing include “Software Testing: A Craftsman’s Approach” by Paul C. Jorgensen, “How to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing” by James A. Whittaker, “Software Testing Techniques” by Boris Beizer, “The Art of Software Testing” by Glenford J. Myers, and “Testing Computer Software” by Cem Kaner, Jack Falk, and Hung Q. Nguyen.

Obtain a relevant degree

While a degree is not a requirement for becoming a software tester, having a degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field can be advantageous in landing a job in software testing. A degree can demonstrate your understanding of software development and computer programming, which can be useful in testing software applications.

Build practical experience

Practical experience is critical in software testing. You can gain experience by participating in open-source projects, contributing to software development efforts, or testing applications in a volunteer or part-time capacity. This experience can also help you develop your testing skills and build a portfolio to showcase your work.

Learn automation testing tools

Automation testing tools have become an essential part of software testing, and learning them can be beneficial in your career. Popular automation testing tools include Selenium, JMeter, and Appium. Familiarizing yourself with these tools can help you become more efficient in testing software applications and make you a more valuable candidate in the job market.

Seek certification

Consider obtaining a certification such as ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) or CSTE (Certified Software Tester). Certification can help validate your skills and experience to potential employers and demonstrate your commitment to the profession. Certification can also provide you with a competitive advantage when applying for software testing jobs.

Network with other software testers

Networking is essential in any profession, including software testing. Attend software testing conferences, join online communities, or participate in forums to connect with other software testers. Networking can help you learn about job opportunities, share knowledge, and gain insights from industry experts.

Apply for entry-level jobs

Look for entry-level software testing jobs such as software tester, quality assurance analyst, or test engineer. These roles can provide you with on-the-job training and help you gain experience in real-world testing scenarios. Entry-level jobs can also help you build your skills, gain exposure to various testing tools and methodologies, and advance your career. Refer to manual testing interview questions for ideas and prepare for entry-level jobs.

Conclusion

In conclusion, starting a career in software testing requires persistence, continuous learning, and a strong desire to learn and grow. The software testing career path can be rewarding and challenging. As technology evolves, so too does the role of software testing. By building your skills and experience, obtaining certifications, and networking with other software testers, you can position yourself for a successful career in software testing.

It is important to continually learn and stay up-to-date with new testing methodologies, tools, and technologies. Additionally, developing strong communication and collaboration skills will help you work effectively with developers, project managers, and other stakeholders.

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<Image Credits- unsplash.com>

<This is a guest post by Kuldeep Rana who is the founder and lead author of ArtOfTesting. He is skilled in test automation, performance testing, big data, and CI-CD. He brings his decade of experience to his current role where he is dedicated to educating the QA professionals.>


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Finding Confidence and Mentoring: Speaking Skills for Women in Tech

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

<This is a guest post by Lena Heller>

Women today have made significant progress in the technology sector by removing barriers and dispelling preconceptions. Nevertheless, despite advancements, women in technology continue to confront particular difficulties when it comes to speaking and presenting. This piece will examine these difficulties and provide guidance on how women in technology may receive more recognition by honing their presentation skills, gaining confidence, and finding mentoring.

Mentoring

A major issue is the dearth of mentoring for women in technology. Women are 24% less likely than males to have a sponsor, and they are also less likely to get guidance from top executives, according to data from LeanIn.org. When it comes to developing their public speaking and presenting abilities, women in technology may find this lack of mentoring to be particularly challenging.

It may be quite beneficial to have a mentor who can offer advice and criticism on presentational techniques. A mentor may offer guidance on how to develop, give suggestions on how to attract an audience, and offer calming techniques. A mentor can also aid in boosting confidence by providing assistance and inspiration.

Community

The value of community is one viewpoint to take into account. Women in technology may create encouraging networks that assist them as they develop their public speaking and presenting abilities.

Joining organizations like Women Who Code, Women in Tech, or Tech Ladies can open doors for networking with other women working in the field, sharing experiences, and exchanging knowledge.

Opportunity

Women m technology might have felt a dearth of opportunities and inclusion in conference lineups and speakers lists. As that improves and events become more and more aware of the need to be inclusive of voices of different genders, races and nationalities, more avenues are opening up to present yourself in the best way possible and bring your voice to the forefront!

Self Confidence

When it comes to speaking and presenting, lack of confidence may be a significant obstacle for women in technology. Women may experience feelings of exclusion or a lack of value for their opinions, which can cause self-doubt and a fear of speaking up. Gaining confidence is essential to getting beyond these obstacles.

Honing Your Skills

There are many ways to hone your speaking and presenting skills as a woman in tech. Here are a few tips useful for anyone looking at speaking or presenting at an event:

Preparation

Preparation is imperative increase confidence. Clarity on the subject matter and target audience may ease nervousness and boost self-assurance. Multiple rehearsals of the presentation might help you find areas that could use improvement and increase your confidence in how to deliver the material.

The viewpoint of the audience should also be taken into account. It’s possible that listeners for presentations by women in tech aren’t used to seeing women in technical jobs. This may result in unintentional biases that affect how the audience sees the presenter.

Practice

Speaking in low-pressure situations is one method to gain confidence. For instance, joining a local Toastmasters club may offer a secure setting to hone public speaking abilities and get feedback in an encouraging setting. Finding chances to speak in front of small groups, such as facilitating team meetings or giving a presentation at a meetup, may also assist with confidence and skill development.

Body Language

The significance of body language should also be taken into account when talking about speaking and presentation abilities for women in technology. The audience’s perception of the presenter and the message being conveyed can be greatly influenced by nonverbal clues. Women could use nonverbal cues like crossing their arms or avoiding eye contact that could be interpreted as meek or deferential, which might take away from their message.

Concentrate on using forceful and confident body language to get over these obstacles.

Stand tall, Make eye contact, and Make open motions.

Power postures, like the “Wonder Woman” with the feet shoulder-width apart and the hands on the hips, may also assist build confidence and exude authority.

Voice Modulation

The verbal delivery should also be considered. According to research, women’s voices are frequently assessed more severely than men’s, and they may face consequences if they speak up or use vocal fry. However, altering one’s voice patterns can be difficult, and women shouldn’t feel under pressure to adhere to societal expectations of speaking.

For instance, studies have shown that women frequently say things like “I think” or “maybe,” which might damage their credibility and authority.

To be heard loudly and confidently, practice projecting your voice.

Concentrate on utilizing your voice to exude excitement and love for their profession.

Speaking at a steady speed and utilizing different tones and inflections to emphasize points are some examples of how to do this.

Establish Credibility

When selecting a topic to speak, concentrate on establishing credibility via your competence and knowledge in that area.

Building trust and overcoming prejudices can be facilitated by meticulous planning and showing a solid mastery of the subject.

Women can also use their distinctive perspectives to contribute fresh viewpoints and methods.

Storytelling

Utilize narrative to enhance the impact of your presentations.

The use of stories may help make complex technical ideas more relevant, vivid, and emotionally engaging for the audience.

Conclusion

In conclusion, women in IT suffer particular difficulties when it comes to confidence, prejudice, and speaking and presenting skills. By concentrating on gaining confidence, utilizing distinctive perspectives, effectively using storytelling and body language, and finding allies and advocates, women can overcome these obstacles and succeed in public speaking. The industry can gain from the variety of viewpoints and knowledge that women in tech bring to the table by promoting and supporting them.

Finally, it’s critical to understand that speaking and presenting abilities are skills that may be improved in time with practice, support and mentorship. Early failures shouldn’t deter you! Concentrate on constant development and you will get there!

Good luck!

<Image Credits – Unsplash.com>

This is a guest post by Lena Heller – Reach her at lenaaaheller@gmail.com

My interview with Fabian Böck featured on Youtube -“Never Feel Stuck”

Nishi Grover Garg1 Comment

I was recently invited by Fabian Böck for a chat over on his Youtube channel where he frequently interviews people in tech on various topics of interest in the industry. My talk was focused on how to steer the direction of your tech career. We had a fantastic talk about how to pave learning avenues, set for yourself time to reflect, and how companies should be enabling their workforce. And most importantly, how to ‘Never Feel Stuck’ in where you are – even if you are happy or not and use continuous learning and self improvement to guide yourself to better places!

Here is a link to the video interview-

Fabian’s company Boeck and XOXO works on Tech Conventions x Matchmaking Marketplace x Tech Talks. Check them out for more interesting talks and content!

Check out the Linkedin posts here – https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6821385665146691584/

Cheers

Nishi

Taking a MasterClass with the Ministry of Testing!

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

I was invited to take a MasterClass by the wonderful people at the Ministry of Testing last month. They had a ‘Communities’ theme going on for the month of June 2021 and they loved my talk idea about Leveraging Tech Communities. So we worked around that theme to create a talk on “Grow your Career with Tech Communities”

I had an awesome time taking the #DojoMasterclass with Ministry of Testing . What a wonderful experience!

My talk focused on discussing-

  • How to leverage the power of communities in your personal and professional growth
  • How to contribute, volunteer and participate in communities
  • How user communities help in taking your company’s brand forward
  • How can companies create powerful and engaged user communities

I am grateful for the opportunity I got, the great feedback I received from the participants, and an awesome host Vernon Richards.

Thanks, Áine McGovern, Heather Reid, and Simon Tomes for arranging the session! 🙂

Check out the recording on the Pro Dojo https://lnkd.in/gy24FvW

How to Access the recording

  1. Click on this Link  
  2. If you have a PRO Account, click on the GREEN Button on top of the screen “Sign In to View this Content” and sign in with your PRO Acount
  3. If you do not have a PRO Account, click on ‘Go Pro to view this content’ Register for the Pro Account
  4. You can now Play the recording!

Speaking from Home

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Conferences, events and meetups are all things I enjoy. I have been an organizer, speaker & presenter, host and volunteer at many events. When 2020 started, I had big hopes and plans of travelling to speak at multiple international events and also had a few local Bangalore events lined up. But the world had to face a pandemic and everything came to a screeching halt.

As many of you, I was disheartened too. But I still hoped for things to get better, thinking we might get to some of the events at least. Things are different now. We now know that this lifestyle is here to stay. We have been working, learning, recruiting, networking and meeting remotely and might have to continue to do so for a while.

But where does this put the life of a ‘speaker’ – someone who enjoys speaking, being invited to attend and talk at events?

Well, I would like to highlight how I have been pleasantly surprised by the state of our events and their emergence from all the cancellations, losses and hearbreaks!

In the past 6 months, I have spoken at more events I would have normally! I have had the chance to connect with multiple events in various ways and all of them have shown me the resilience of our community.

TestBash Home 2020

It started with TestBash Home. Since TestBash Detroit was cancelled where I was to speak in April this year, I was invited to speak at the Testbash Home. It was a unique and fun event handled superbly by the MoT team. I have written in detail about the event and my experience here – https://testwithnishi.com/2020/05/07/my-experience-speaking-at-testbash-home/

TribalQonf , STeP-In Summit, Test Leadership Congress 2020

I was invited by Mahesh Chikane to speak at the TribalQonf which was a great opportunity. I presented about Adopting a Risk Based Test Approach and my talk was appreciated for which I am always #grateful !

My talk at TribalQonf

The event was organised well and I am glad to be a part of this superb round up video along with some awesome speakers!

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My experience speaking at Testbash Home

Nishi Grover Garg2 Comments

The Ministry of Testing (MoT) is definitely the biggest and the most supportive testing community. Having heard so much about their Testbash events conducted world-wide, speaking at one was a long time goal. And I was fortunate enough to be accepted to speak at Testbash Detroit this year. But as things progressed since the beginning of 2020, travels and conferences of any kind were far from possible in light of a the global pandemic of Covid-19. Alas! our dreams were shattered. And though, it was disheartening for sure, the awesome community jumped back from the jolt and got together to bring us all an awesome online event #Testbash Home 2020.

Speakers List – TestBash Home

Preparations began and I too got back to preparing my talk, which I had given up on after the cancellations! Took a couple of weekends sorting out the content and slides. Then we had a call to record the talks with the community members Heather and Diana were ever so supportive and so kind with their emails, scheduling and feedback! This was a wonderful idea to have the talks pre-recorded so that we are not hampered by any technical glitches on the event day, while we speakers get to focus on engaging with everyone and answering questions from the community.

As the day of the event approached, I prepared for my live interview. The event had more than 1000 registrations! Definitely making it the biggest audience I have ever presented to. Though the event began late night hours for my timezone, my talk was at a convenient morning hour. So that is when I joined in. Had a wonderful chat with Richard who was the Backstage boss and handling the entire livestream for the entire 24 hours! Checked on my audio & video etc and also had introductions with James who was the host for that part. And then we were live!

The duration of the talk went great. It was surreal listening to myself presenting, and looking at the live chat and questions coming from the participants throughout the talk. Once it ended, I was back live with my video. Me and James continued to discuss the most popular voted questions asked and I answered them the best to my knowledge. It was amazing to see such great comments and kind appreciation by the listeners in the chats once we were done. #Grateful

Once my talk was done, I could now continue to enjoy the rest of the live event! #Testbash Home was an absolute treat with a mix of great content, discussions, community participation, fun hosts and great conversations! It sure has set the bar really high for all online events in the future. I stayed throughout the next 5 parts of the event and only left late at night when it was absolutely impossible to keep my eyes open 😛

It sure felt like a day away from our regular stay-at-home lives, and felt like we had met up with so many people in the virtual world. Some key highlights of the day were-

  • Awesome talks by speakers
  • Black Box puzzles played live with volunteers
  • 99 second talks with many enthusiastic participants, many of whom were presenting for the first time!
  • The breakout room was so much fun – where you could select your avatar, enter a virtual room and just chit chat (and play with Ralph the dogBoss 😛 )
  • The breaks in-between parts had the background noise of an actual conference hall with people chattering and plates clanking. It was so soothing to hear (given the times we are in!) A fantastic idea! 🙂
  • The hosts did an awesome job engaging everyone in informal chats, yoga, discussing shows we are watching, things we are cooking and what not. Considering that it was a 24 hour long event, it sure was a welcome change of pace every few hours.
  • The short intros of all the MoT community bosses was so much fun to watch and made it very relatable. Now we know the faces behind the names.

Overall, TestBash home was an awesome experience, and I was fortunate to get some great feedback for my first ever Testbash Talk! I also loved the sketch-note of my talk created by Louise Gibbs

Sketch note Created by Louise Gibbs

I look forward to taking it further and engaging with this community in a live Testbash event some day! 🙂

Cheers

Nishi

I am speaking at TestBash Home 2020

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade! None better example of this than the zingy, sweet lemonade under preparation by this awesome community at @Ministry Of Testing , bringing the ‘testing’ flavors of the entire world right to your home!

Despite cancellations of a number of events due to the ongoing pandemic, this community has come back together to create an amazing online event. I am super excited to be speaking at TestBash Home 2020 – the first online software testing conference by Ministry Of Testing. It will begin on the 30th of April 2020 and run for a full 24 hours into the 1st of May 2020, traveling all timezones so that everyone in our truly global testing community can get involved. 

I am honored to be a part of such an awesome line-up of speakers. These hours are going to be packed full of interactive sessions including talks, panels, challenges, plus we’ll relive and reflect on some classic TestBash talks.

Speakers List – TestBash Home 2020

The agenda is live now-

Checkout more details about the event and schedule here –https://www.ministryoftesting.com/events/testbash-home-2020

Follow the updates on Twitter—

Register now for loads of fun and learning and engaging with a worldwide community of testers right from your home!

Cheers

Nishi

What the NAPLAN Fail Tells Us About Testing in Education?

Nishi Grover GargLeave a comment

Implications of Software Testing in the field of Education

The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) are school tests administered to Australian students. This August, the online program was offered to 1.5 million students. Students failed to log on. 

Had the software undergone functional testing, the program could have launched successfully. A functional testing company verifies every function of the software function as per requirements. It is a black box type of testing where the internal structure of the product is not known to the tester.

Functional and Performance Issues – Naplan’s problem has been ongoing. In March, it took students 80 minutes to get to online tests. The requirement was of 5 minutes. The software performed shockingly different from what was planned. 30,000 students had to retake tests, which too were marred by technical glitches. The test data was not automatically saved. The data recovery time was 15 minutes compared to the requirement of zero minutes. Once again, the software did not perform as expected. Eventually, the problem was resolved, however, it came at the expense of dropouts and time lags. 

Accessibility Issues – Naplan software had other errors that a functional testing company could have taken care of. The features that were designed for students with disabilities were not functional. Alternate text for students was missing, incorrect and inaccessible for students with auditory disabilities. The color contrast was poor. The color contrast was of immense importance to those who required accessibility help with seeing visuals. 

In the Naplan case, a functional testing company would prepare several test cases to verify the functionality of the login page, accessibility features, load times and data recovery times against the requirements specified. Functional testing would cover unit testing, integration testing, interface testing, and regression testing. In addition to manual testing, a functional testing company would perform automation testing. Software testing tools automate tests to improve the accuracy and speed of execution.

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