Do you meet another Software Testing professional (besides regular work)?

 

As a Software Testing professional, do you meet another Software Testing professional (besides regular work) and have a long chat over Tea/Coffee?

The respective Tester could be your friend, someone from your Team, from a different Team, or maybe from a different organization, playing a different role and having a different set of responsibilities. If you haven't tried this so far, do try it out.

What can be discussed during this meeting?

🎯 Exchange of day-to-day experiences (in the context of Software Testing)

🎯 Discussions around today's Software Testing Trends, Job opportunities, etc. (in addition to the future of Software Testing)

🎯 Discussions around a variety of Domains

🎯 Experience based Tips and Tricks

🎯 Tools & Technologies (experiences and recommendations)

🎯 Software Testing Books (experiences and recommendations)

🎯 Training and/or Certifications (experiences and recommendations)

🎯 Experiences about past Software Testing Events (Meet-ups, Conferences, Webinars, etc.) and recommendations about upcoming once

🎯 Experiences with past Software Testing Competitions and recommendations about upcoming once

🎯 Discussions around a variety of learning platforms

🎯 Discussions around Software Testing Fundamentals

What are the benefits of such meetings/discussions?

🎯 It enables a unique platform to share your opinions, knowledge, and experiences without fear

🎯 It paves the way to learn from someone's experiences and knowledge

🎯 It brings different perspectives to look at Software Testing and the day-to-day work we do

In my opinion, everyone has different ways of learning and gaining knowledge. I reckon it's always good to experiment with the way we learn.

So, which Software Testing professional are you planning to meet over this weekend? 😊

Feel free to tag them and decide the plan, and yes do enjoy your Tea/Coffee. 😛

If you have any questions and want to connect with me? Feel free to book a 1:1 meeting.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing 👍

Software Tester and Documentation

  

As Software Testers, while doing our day-to-day job we need a lot of information. Maintaining or documenting this information in an organized way becomes a very crucial task.

Documentation may include (but is not limited to) as below -

🎯 Test Cases

🎯 Test Plans

🎯 Bug Reports

🎯 Test Data

🎯 Testing Checklist (Product &/or Project specific)

🎯 Regression Test Suites

🎯 Automated Checks

🎯 Test Environment Details

🎯 Database Details (Connection info, Credentials, Tables, etc.)

🎯 Product knowledge

🎯 Setup/Configuration Details

🎯 Tools (that aid Testing activities) Details

🎯 Any other information that can aid in Testing

In my opinion, we should always put consistent and conscious efforts to capture the information that can help us in the future.

🎯 As an example, let's say you are exploring a specific workflow within your application. During this exploration you struggle with the required data creation, you receive some error and/or warning messages in between, and you miss out on some pre-requisite setups or configurations. To move ahead in completing the workflow, you reached out to team members (Testers/Developers/Product) and got all your issues resolved.

🎯 In such cases; I reckon it's very important to capture all the information that has helped you along the way. This does not just help you in the future, but also it may help you to assist someone as and when needed.

🎯 With the interest of time, on every occasion, it may not be feasible to prepare a well-polished document or notes and this is fine. However; one should attempt to capture the information in whichever form and tool it's feasible then.

Food for thought -
When it comes to documentation, this is my own favorite quote "Information Dimag (दिमाग) में रखो या न रखो... Document में जरुर रखना... जरुरत पडने पर Dimag (दिमाग) नहीं काम आया तो Document जरुर काम आयेगा...", meaning "Keep the information in your brain or not... Must keep it in the document... If the need arises, if your brain does not help, then the document will come in handy..."

If you have any questions and want to connect with me? Feel free to book a 1:1 meeting.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing 👍

JIRA Dashboard

  

We all like to view the status of what's happening in a Project, isn't it? 😁

Well, this is where utilities or tools like a dashboard (e.g. Atlassian's JIRA Dashboard) assist us.

Atlassian's JIRA Dashboard is a customizable, graphical presentation of various pieces of important information from your JIRA project. It can provide an overview of all the critical stats related to the project's progress, issues, and relevant information and enable collaboration among team members.

Features/Components of a JIRA Dashboard -

🎯 Gadgets - JIRA offers a variety of gadgets including Charts, Wallboard, etc.

🎯 Customization - Depending on the requirement one can create and configure the JIRA Dashboard by adding, configuring, and arranging different types of gadgets.

🎯 Filters - Specific JQL (based on the need) can be saved as a Filter. This Filter can be used while configuring a specific gadget on the JIRA Dashboard.

🎯 Access & Control - JIRA allows you to control Viewers and Editors of the Dashboard.

There are many JIRA gadgets that I like, but 'Two Dimensional Filter Statistics', 'Filter Results', 'Issue Statistics', 'Pie Chart', 'Heat Map', etc. come to my mind first.

Which is your favorite JIRA Dashboard gadget?

Also, feel free to add any additional pointers.

Food for thought - A Dashboard (generated via JIRA or any other Software) is just a presentation of the critical stats about your project. Until you feed in the accurate data in the right way (in the respective Software), the Dashboard won't serve the purpose.

If you have any questions and want to connect with me? Feel free to book a 1:1 meeting.

Keep Learning, Keep Growing 👍