How to Become Better Software Tester in 2020 - Keeping Your Passion and positivity intact...!

Way back in 2015, when I started my journey as a Software Quality Assurance Internship and Now nearing to complete my 5 years of Testing Journey in 2020, I ask myself What changed in me...? The one answer that always comes in my mind is, I have become passionate about Software Quality and all its different aspects. And Whenever someone asks me I always introduce myself as a "Passionate Software Test Engineer" Being an active member in my professional social media platform and keeping an active dialog with all my connections in the Software world. I was always eager to write down my thoughts on how we are growing as Software Tester, And what is driving the current market, most importantly How to keep your interest intact and becoming better version of yourself. Here are few things I wanted to convey about How you can become a better Software Tester in 2020.

1. Be Passionate About the Skills you posses And Improve Them :

Yes, Being passionate about the skills you possess and having the aim to improve is also a skillset. Does it ever happened...? you found a critical bug and it leads to changing the entire codebase...? And it happened because you care about being customer first to your application. I will not speak about Manual and Automation skills. Firstly, be good at what you do. Software Testing always starts and ends with your mindset. Entry and Exit Criteria are only there for the Test Plan.

So, Being Passionate and proud about what you do as Software Tester is the first skill I will advise we all should possess and improve on.

We spend hours and days to find that single defect, We have skills to code and detect that regression bug which caused the disturbance in the entire user flow. Remember our first goal is to be a user to our application and find that defect. So Be proud of what you are doing first and improve them be it a process, Functional, manual or automated. Just remember our goal. Trust me, I have very much passionate about these skills and enjoyed this in my journey Automation and Manual are the ways of testing only and not the type of testing. Have a balance of these skills. Do not feel low if you lack in one of those, try to improve slowly.

2. Learn the Concept of Technology and not the Tools only:

It is good to learn the tool as part of your requirement and task you are carrying out with it. But, first, learn the concept of it. Why it actually exists. Tools can replace any day but not the driving factor of it. Being a Software Tester And working in automation tools and libraries. We know some set of tools. but do you know these tools are there to replace as and when our requirement changes? When I started learning Automation I have started learning FitNesse Tool [One of the automation tool which runs on Selenium RC], I was not aware of the fact about Selenium Webdriver and its capability. But, One Thing I learned is at that time it was solving our needs and as per our requirements. So remember tools will always change, as per your requirement you have to the choose and learn the concept about what help you need and who can solve the purpose. Do you know, It takes only 5 minutes to create your own Jenkins Plugin...? and can be used as a tool.

Another example is about Docker the tool I am learning nowadays, I have first learned the concept of Monolithic and Microservice, Why there is a need of migrating your applications, its pros and cons, Started learning Linux first, 2 years before I cannot even install a software in Linux, but due to learning the concept I am trying some experiment and now, I can create, run and deploy many small application with the help of that conceptual knowledge which I gained over the period of learning the tool. The one thing you might ask me why I started learning these tools...? It because of the changes in the software industry, I know in Initial years I used to deploy applications trough a readymade batch file and doing tedious steps just to deploy my Test Environment whenever we get bi-weekly builds from Software Team. Things have changed a lot Companies are moving to Cloud-native application. There is a huge shift towards the Microservices application. So I Advise would be to learn the shift which is happening, learn the concept first and then the tool which satisfies your use case, be aware and keeping experimenting with other tools as well.

3. Challenges come to us with Opportunity, Don't FearAnd Keep Learning:

I have thrown to challenge with supporting the DevOps culture in my recent assignment being a Software Tester. It just opened a door of opportunities for me. I am very new to this assignment, it added additional responsibilities. But it may or not happen with everybody. but its the way of improving our current process and I bet everything we are currently doing has a better way of doing it. So start slow and learn the skills in your spare time. connect with likeminded people.

There always lies an opportunity to grow. being a Software Tester you are not limited to do the Testing only, Learn some internal about the software you are testing, Gone are the days when we get the readymade server to Test. We are shifting left towards the Software LifeCycle. Eventually, we are improving Software Quality And That's our Sole purpose and it should be our top priority. We have been threatened about Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning skill will eventually take your job or companies pretending we don't need Testers, roles like SDET, FullStack QA are getting evolved. But, remember the only thing will remain common is How you are improving and how you are upskilling yourself.

Have a plan ready for your goals and things you want to learn this year to get updated with your skillset. Join some local meetups, share your knowledge, attend technical conferences and workshop even if you don't know anything, you will get an idea of what is there for us to learn, take feedback from people around you. do some certification that way you keep focused and you can also validate your skill and become a better version of yourself keeping your passion and Positivity intact.

I hope you understand what can drive you this year, Its not a resolution for this year. but it should be a promise to our career and valuing and becoming proud of what we do. I hope at the end of this year you confidently and proudly introduce yourself as "I am a Passionate Software Testing Professional..! :) :)

Happy Learning and Happy New Year... :)

Sharing a few things which I planned for this year, Let me know yours as well...!