Showing value as a tester

Welcome back to the JG Tests Blog, hope you’ve enjoyed the content so far as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it :-).

Now in my time as a software tester, alongside being asked what testers actually do (check the previous blog post for more on this!), some people who have expressed more interest also ask how testers show value in the role. From my perspective, mutual comprehension is key so that a developer is in tune with testing activities and vice versa (this becomes easier through experience and building rapport I’ve found). But I’ll delve into some of the ways that a tester can display value within a team.

First thing I will mention is….

Speak up!

Now it may seem like a simple thing to do, but I’ve often seen testers go on rants amongst their peers and whilst they clearly have valid points to contribute, these aren’t always shared with the relevant parties.

I have been guilty of this myself as I’ve moved to a company where there are more people/roles to interact with and it has taken a while to find my feet amongst more business-minded roles such as the Product Owner or Business Analyst as I figured I should leave them to do most of the talking – but it’s important to remember that as testers we need to ask questions/express concerns as we need information in order to perform our job. Don’t be afraid to speak up in meetings and don’t be afraid to approach members of the team. It’s always better to have a clear picture of what you’re testing.

Sometimes when you are working on a project for a extended period of time, it can seem like all you can see is oodles of work. There have been times where things are so busy I can’t see past the work…it even seems odd to have conversations at the time that aren’t via the IM client as I’m just working away ha. But whether you notice it or not…you are a knowledge base.

Quick story: so this was a slightly abnormal day as I’d been asked by a Product Owner to review the process flow of these proposed high-fidelity redesigns for a customer portal. Even though I have extensively worked with the current implementation of this customer portal I was surprised to be asked for input. As it transpired, I provided valuable input that indicated that some design tweaks were required due to some technical limitations that the UX Designer/Product Owner weren’t previously aware of. On a side note, learn to communicate effectively in these settings, it’ll work wonders for you. Oh, and you can show value as a tester ;).

Another way to show value as a tester is through assisting with debugging. When testing apps, obtain crash logs through Android Debug Monitor/Android Studio/XCode/iPhone Configuration Utility (after resymbolicating) to get a relevant error stack trace to send to the developer in question. For web applications, there may be Logviewers that monitor internal traffic (which is great when you are testing against staging/sandbox) or software analytics tools where you can keep an eye on performance and also view error analytics as well. These kind of tools are invaluable for quickly tracing where an error has taken place, with the usual accompanying details that can speed up the debugging process for a developer. In my experience, having this information available when finding defects has been invaluable and it is very helpful in improving understanding of the system being worked upon, and also adds another tool to a testers bow as a go-to place to investigate if something has gone wrong – real-time feedback is great!

Hopefully my few words above help to bring it home – your input is valuable and appreciated…just open your mouth/send a IM/send an email and provide that value that is within you.

Of course, you would generalise this even further and apply it to wider life…but I’m no life coach 🙂

Now to end, the story of the most unexpected bug I’ve ever found:

I was working on a consultancy project for this company that wanted some internal apps for their organisation to replace their paper-based system. For a small set of users this includes an administration portal for managers to enable/disable functionality within the apps. Now I was asked to test end-to-end functionality which require me to adjust some settings on the portal and check that these changes took effect in the app. However upon logging in, I noticed in size 22 text an expletive (one of the strongest English ones I hasten to add) instantly caught my attention on the home page. I’ve never raised a Blocker ticket for a text change but today was a new day. Turns out the developer was in a bad mood that day….but hey, can’t say I didn’t provide value :).

Until next time, happy testing!