Introduction
In the past year I have written a number of articles in which I have indicated that traditional testers must become more technical in order to be asked for assignments in the future and to be valuable in our field. I was then asked by several people what advice I would give them to achieve their growth as a technical tester. In response, I’ll give you a few tips below to move from a traditional tester to a technical tester. I am not trying to win the originality prize with this list of tips. These are just tips that have personally helped me to get better ‘on the technical side of thing’. I hope you can take advantage of it.
Are you interested in technology? This tip seems to be an open door, but many testers don’t have this mindset. As far as I’m concerned, being interested in technology means actively looking for answers to questions such as: – How does email work on a technical level? – What are Rest APIs? – What is the difference between HTTP and HTTPS? If you hear an unfamiliar technical term in the workplace, write down the term and Google it at a quiet moment. Try to understand the term and make connections. You will see that if you approach the technique with the necessary interest, the insight will follow.
Learn a programming language Very simple. Learn a programming language. Python is seen by many as an easy entry-level programming language. Learning Python or any other programming language is now possible with a MOOC. You can also buy an online training at Udemy, for example. There are regular online competitions where participants are challenged to solve technical problems in their favorite programming language. Challenge yourself to participate in such competitions.
As far as I’m concerned, programming is 80% knowing what you want and can program (preparation) and 20% how you can program with the programming language (execution). My experience is that if you know one programming language really well, you can master all programming languages. Your role as a tester becomes so much more effective when you are able to read program code and write simple functions in any programming language.
Learn the technology on your project This may also be an open door. Ask the developers and technical testers about the pipeline on your project, which tools are used? How do these tools relate to each other? How is software deployed on the different environments in the OTAP street? How do you configure those tools? Do you need knowledge of a specific programming language for that? Again, the following applies here: terms, tools, etc. that you want to know more about. Write them down and Google them later. Try to understand the logic of the pipeline.
Do an online training and go to meetups There are various technical training courses that can be followed online and many can be completed with a certificate. Besides being a good way to acquire knowledge, it is also fun and modern.
In recent years, so-called meetups have been organized all over the world. Find a meeting that interests you on https://www.meetup.com/ and get (and share) your knowledge.
Discuss bugs content with developers Many testers write bug reports that only describe the symptom of a failed test case. “I have performed the following steps, I expected x as the result, but I get error y”. In most situations, this is an excellent starting point for a developer to solve a defect. You can be more effective as a tester by talking to developers about the cause of the bug. Try to clarify the root cause of the bug. Do you see connections with other, previous bugs? Was it a bug that was programmed? Is it infra related? What can you learn from the bug? In short, don’t try to avoid technology here either, but embrace it.
Find a technical hobby Single Board Computers have been very popular for about ten years now. Driven by the popularity of the Raspberry Pi, many hobbyists and therefore many technical testers, including me, have acquired a Single Board Computer. These SBCs generally run on a Linux distro and are ideal for running your own server, for example. In short, you can choose your own projects. For example, you can use an SBC to set up your own Mediawiki, or you can use it to create your own DNS Server with filtering capabilities (eg Pihole or Adguard Home for those in the know). Do you want your own multi-room sound system? Install PiCorePlayer on your Raspberry Pi (and buy your own DAC board to improve the sound). Something for everyone, because there are plenty of options.
By setting up and managing your Single Board Computer yourself, you gain a lot of knowledge. You can also use much of this knowledge in your technical test assignments. For example, to manage an SBC you need knowledge of the Command Line Interface, you learn Linux and you know how to modify a text file in VIM. Knowledge that I use regularly in my technical test assignments.
Conclusion
Growing from a traditional tester to a technical tester is basically not difficult. It does take a lot of effort. You will have to invest a lot of time to acquire this knowledge. Invest that time in your projects, do (online) training and above all try to acquire the knowledge in an interesting way for you. Then you will see that every traditional tester has the quality of being a technical tester.
This article is published earlier in the TestNet Nieuws with the title “Iedere traditionele tester heeft het in zich om een technische tester te worden”. The article was published on 24 June 2020.
