There was a time when my approach to software testing was based on experience and instinct. And I have met and talked to experienced software testers who did the same.
While I still think that these are good traits to have, I have learnt that it is not enough to do software testing at a professional level. I feel like this is one of the reasons why other professions look down on us.
Doing software testing at a professional level means acting responsibly, reasoning what you are doing, working with roughly constant quality, trying to improve, and teaching others. This post explains why tools can help you do just that.
You may be wondering what kind of tools I mean. I mean non-software tools. Tools that can be written in a digital document or on plain paper. Tools that make you think, inspire, guide or help you to visualise information.
Here are some examples:
Checklists and Cheat Sheets
Mind Maps
(Matrix) Tables
Now that you hopefully have a better understanding of the tools I mean, let's move on to the benefits.
You can rely on your form on the day. But this can lead to work results of uneven quality. Some days you will have a lot of great ideas and find important bugs and risks that matter. Other days you won't.
Tools can help you to reproduce the good days. Checklists, for example. They remind you of things to look out for. They give you a structured way of thinking. They help you to get your brain into a certain state and inspire you to think beyond what the checklists have to offer.
The same goes for other tools. And the more you work with these tools, the more you train your brain to think about certain aspects. This means that some ideas will come to you without you having to use them.
If someone asks you to reason what you have done, and your answers just point to your experience and instincts, they may find it unprofessional. And I don't see any argument that says otherwise.
Many tools can help you to reason why you did certain things. They can also be used as a starting point for documenting your testing. This will help you to share and discuss it with others.
Have you ever tried to teach a junior tester or developer how to test? I have, and it is really hard to do this based on instinct and experience. Tools have helped me to be better at teaching software testing.
You can show and explain how you use them based on real test sessions. They can then use these tools by their own to guide their work.
By using tools over and over again, the people you teach train their brains to think in certain ways. They might also start to create their own that better suit the way they think and work. Wonderful, isn't it?
Look at the tools that other software testers use and experiment with them. Adapt them to your needs or craft your own. Not every tool will appeal to you. But the ones that do might help you become a better software tester, just as they have helped me.
What tools are you using?
Have a great one,
Florian
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.