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Friday, July 4, 2014

The Clark-Kents of IT world



"Why testing?", asked my interviewer. "Why not testing?", was my response to him. I was attending one of the interview calls when I was looking for a job after my yearlong maternity break. He was curious that given my academic record why I was a tester. My response surprised me more than my interviewer. For a software engineer who was initially reluctant to do any testing project as she preferred development, it was a major shift of opinion. I was suddenly defending testing.

I have been associated with direct-indirect testing for nearly 5 years. But let me make it clear - I am not a Tester neither a Developer. I started my career with programming, then manual testing, then development and again testing. I am a logical mind and I love building logic. So be it writing test scenarios or writing a program in any language, I don't mind unless I am not enjoying what I am doing. As for becoming an expert in any one language- I am more of a software connoisseur who loves exploring anything if given the opportunity.

Everybody knows the good side of programming. But few give testing its due importance. Statistically speaking, a study conducted by NIST in 2002 reports that software bugs cost the U.S. economy $59.5 billion annually. More than a third of this cost could be avoided if better software testing was performed.[cited]

But here are some amazing reasons on why I believe anyone should be proud of being a tester:

1. Testing compliance means a satellite will not fail while launching. Just imagine years of hard work and money go waste just because a simple unnoticed bug proved fatal at last moment.

2. Saving Business: I have very innovative features in my website but in production it was painful to even browse the UI. Users left and went to other sites and my competitors hijacked my website's intelligent features. And now everybody call them pioneer in the technology. Well, it actually happened with one of the big client, I have worked in the past.

img courtesy http://cartoontester.blogspot.in
3. Testing is fun. The making, breaking, pulling and pushing a code written by a super-confident 'developer' becomes an enjoying experience if done with full interest. It’s like atonement.

4. Designing test scenarios can actually help the grey cells to be fit and healthy. It’s the SUDOKU of IT world. It helps retain the sanity of the human mind busy with machine interactions and coding complex solutions.

5. A tester is like superman who saves software life by ensuring its quality but he is happy to be known as a common man in the world where everyone else claims to be a hero. Simple living, high thinking :P

If you really want to enjoy the IT world, embrace both testing and programming as both are incomplete without each other. It will make you a super-coder, super-tester. While I believe that manual testing is a great activity but learning Test automation puts an icing on the cake. So, my advice to all manual testers is to have some nice experience in automation as well. It makes a tester complete. Now, Food for thought  - who will test the code for automation framework?? ;)

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