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Every tester has a unique story about how they got involved in testing. So how did you get started in software testing. Tell us your story 🙂
After I finished my study Business Informatics I joined CMG and became a developer. I loved doing IT projects and solving problems, but didn’t really enjoyed programming. To me it felt like starring at a screen whole day. I liked the communication and collaboration with other people. Every release we brought live during the weekend, we were fixing the whole week after so I started to look for ways to improve the quality of the software we were building. Doing this I ran into testing. We did testing as developers but as I look back on what we really did, it is better described as trying.
My first steps in the wondrous world of testing were as a test automation engineer, later I also did manual testing. Here I found my passion: finding things out, learning about how people work, helping teams to make better software. And back in the nineties testing wasn’t a real job within IT in many projects. So it felt really good to help developing the testing profession within the Telecom Industry I was mainly working in.
During my testing career I questioned and changed my beliefs over the years. It has been a long exploration learning more about testing, asking myself how to become a great tester. I learned by making many mistakes and trying many different ways. I learned structured testing methodologies but still struggled with the testing I did… I did a talk at EuroSTAR last year on this topic.
I took quite a strange route into testing. (Is there any “normal” or “typical” route to becoming a tester? I don’t think there is!)
I studied Journalism at university, but by the time that I graduated, I’d become quite disillusioned with the news industry (low pay, long hours, watching peers being hired based on their connections rather than their skills). So I joined a local web design company as an office junior, just because “it pays the bills”.
Things moved fast in that company! When I joined, there was no customer service team – clients would telephone our developers directly to request changes. Naturally this meant that work was going untracked/unbilled, and the Development Manager only knew a small fraction of what his team was doing. So, month 1: founded a Customer Services department, which grew to a team of 6 within a year.
After founding the Customer Services department, I naturally began having much more frequent communication with our clients. Through their feedback (and often their complaints) I discovered that we were often delivering our projects with major problems, and (as many of our sites were templated) we were often making the same mistakes project-after-project. Guess what? There was no testing team… So after a few months in Customer Services, I volunteered to create a QA department.
My first few months in testing involved being thrown in at the deep-end, with only my journalistic experience of sub-editing (checking articles for spelling, grammar and stylistic problems) and a copy of the ISEB Foundation syllabus as my guide. (Syllabus-led certifications have their detractors, but this was a really valuable part of giving me a grounding in the basics of testing – though only because I continued my learning/questioning afterwards and didn’t think that I suddenly knew everything about testing.)
That’s how I started, almost 10 years ago now – though I’d say that I’ve grown more as a tester in the past 18 months than at any time in the past nine years. A conversation for another time, maybe 🙂
How I got involved in testing.
I was an IT consultant at the time, working as a ‘Geek Interface’ – a development background as well as a project management background allowing me to interpret requirements from the client into software development strategy and vice versa.
My first assignment in Public/Beta test management was on behalf of EA Games, sourcing test groups for their game in development – Lord of the Rings The Battle for Middle-earth 2 and subsequently Command & Conquer 3 (acquired Westwood Studios game).
I was hooked!
I then embarked on a 6 month contract with RIBA Enterprises (the commercial arm of the Royal Institute of British Architects) to expand their fledgling Beta Test trial and it became my baby.
That was 7 years ago!
I have a logical approach to most things but the chance to work so closely with end-users gives me that insight into how our customers actually perceive and use the products we create (logically & emotionally).
It allows me to empathise with them as a consumer while understanding what will be involved in building more robust software (Human Interaction and Exploratory testing).
I get to watch the border between business & customer while making sure the lines of communication remain open.
What’s your story?
I started off as a developer, working on mobile network infrastructure. Projects were long and the development challenges weren’t exactly the best, but mainly I found I used to get very frustrated when my code wouldn’t compile, or didn’t work properly. Maybe I just wasn’t that good at development 🙂 but it meant that, when we moved into the testing phase of one of the projects, I took more of an interest in the testing and started helping out more, rather than merely fixing the bugs that were found.
I found I enjoyed the testing, I enjoyed setting up the equipment and then exploring the software, and I found that, by doing so, I suddenly wasn’t so frustrated anymore. So I took the opportunity to make my next role a testing role and I’ve been in software testing ever since.
What’s interesting now is that I have gone back to spending some time on development side projects, particularly around test automation. Some of my development interest never went away, I’ve merely re-purposed it in order to improve my testing skillset.
Before I got involved in Testing I had to get involved in computing. My school in the 1970’s didn’t have any computers and we were told nothing about them. After completing my ‘A’ levels in 1978 I drifted from a boring office job handling insurance claims into labouring work which was physically demanding but much more fun.
I’ve kept in touch with some extraordinary friends I made in those days, one of whom pointed out the jobs page in the Sun newspaper to me in 1980 as he made Breville toasted sandwiches while reflecting on a great night in the pub. “Look at this Dec! Computer Programmers get paid £8,000 a year!” That sentence has stayed with me for 34 years, and it was fresh in my mind when the very next week my spirited girlfriend told me she wanted to do a Business Studies HND at Sunderland Polytechnic and wished I would go with her. I looked through the courses on offer and chose the Data Processing degree because it offered the possibility of that £8k job. Without taking advice or considering any other destinations, we both submitted our applications. Sometime later I was accepted on the basis of my old ‘A’ levels, and she was rejected. To cut a long story short, we split up and a few years later I was working as a graduate analyst-programmer. There were some obscure programming languages I really enjoyed, like Redifon Assembler, MUMPS, and TACL, while finding others like COBOL tedious.
With the help of some program specifications, I would sit with the end users, get them to describe what they wanted, then write the code and test it myself. I don’t expect many people to believe me, but most of my assembler programs were defect free at the first attempt and went straight into production without any issues. Unfortunately COBOL was like a dark cloud of annoying problems that took ages to resolve, even though I was testing my programs personally wearing the same blinkers I wrote the code with. When I say ‘testing’ it was all intuitive seat-of-the-pants stuff then, but for small systems it worked. Of course there was no performance testing but assembler is pretty efficient anyway; and there was no security testing, but the World Wide Web hadn’t been invented and few computers were networked.
By chance I became a part-time systems manager and learned how to cold-start a Tandem fault-tolerant mini-computer using the toggle switches to enter binary commands, among many other tasks. Those experiences provided me with enough skills in 1988 to take my first contract job as a Test Analyst at EFTPOS UK which was sucking in anyone from around the world with good Tandem or BASE24 knowledge to build a national EFT/POS system. Even then two senior guys were on £100 per hour, and we made a big effort to become true professionals, hoping to follow in their footsteps. The project was granted Pentagon permission to use RSA encryption which was unbreakable at the time, and had until then only been used by the US military. We even put Hewlett-Packard protocol analysers on the line in the computer operations room to test the message formats in flight. It was a high-testosterone mostly male environment and two events stand out in my memories.
Firstly, the raised floor to the computer room often had large tiles taken up to allow access to the cables and water cooling system. The operators placed metal poles and yellow tape around the holes as a safety measure. One day an Operator named Kwasi was talking to his colleagues and stepped backwards through the tape onto the corner of a raised tile which had been placed diagonally over an open area. It dropped into the hole and flipped the opposite corner of the metal-edged tile upwards, just as Kwasi descended legs apart into the hole. The corner of that tile caught his full body weight right in the scrotum and a vast amount of blood was left between that spot and the ambulance that took him away. As the stains were explained to testers visiting the Operations room each man grabbed himself between the legs and groaned at the thought of it.
The other event was the day a C.V. landed on the Test Managers’ desk for a female tester who had been a runner up in the Miss Western Australia beauty competition. “You have GOT to interview her!” we all demanded. We waited with baited breath for the day of her interview and finally the call came that she was in reception. The Test Manager collected Lynne and they walked past our glass-walled office to an interview room. I could see every head in the room follow this incredible vision of tall black-haired beauty until she was out of sight, and then just keep staring at the vacant spot where she had disappeared. Of course she was hired and it was like someone shouting “There’s GOLD in the hills!” Everyone wanted to help Lynne all the time. There was usually a crowd of about six testers helping her every task and although highly capable in her own right, she took the assistance with good humour. She already had a boyfriend and none of us stood a chance, but forces of nature made idiots of all of us. We loved having her in the office and working as Testers together. Eventually the project ended and we all went our separate ways imagining future testing projects would be something like the last. Unfortunately for my male colleagues and I, there never was another Tester like Lynne, but so far as I know, no-one else ever did another ‘Kwasi’ either!
Interesting that many of the paths to Software Testing are sinuous and indirect!
But it is not that surprising… From my observations, many of the computer related professions are like that. After all, few children grow up looking up to become a software engineer or an accountant, childhood is ought to have dreams with more “movie-ish” routines: Doctors, astronauts, firemen, car racer… 🙂Looking around, there is a myriad of accidental careers, it is not a testing exclusivity: People who work as scrap-merchants, disposable-cups manufacturers, grey-market exporters, software customer support… often get there by accident (I don’t even imagine how one does to get into these occupations). It seems logical to say that many of the interesting careers out there are ones which you fall into (they start as a surprise), instead of ones that you plan onto (if you can really plan it so well, it sounds boring) ;).
I personally have only ever had a career in testing. I had other jobs during Uni but I don’t count them.
I got in to testing based on my degree. I did a generic computing degree, but I purposely choose a degree with a sandwich year.
I was fortunately to land a placement at Lloyds TSB as an “Automation QA Specialist”. I really enjoyed my placement year as I got an insight into the world of testing but was also able to use my programming skills developed during my degree.
But what actually kicked started my testing career was based on that LloydsTSB put us graduation through “ISEB” Foundation, which we all passed.
Once graduated, I wanted to go back to LTSB, unfortunately they were off shoring all there IT to India, so that was a no go, I then started applying to graduate schemes but the competition was fierce.
Then I decided one day to see what value this certification had, turns out a lot (I see this as not such a good thing now…..) so I decided to apply to some testing jobs, I had three interviews in a week and was offered a testing job on the friday, the rest is history.
You can read a more detailed write up of my story here http://www.thefriendlytester.co.uk/2013/04/it-all-started-withan-istqb.html.
Like a lot of people, I also stumbled into my testing career.
I studied electronic engineering at university and really struggled getting a job in this field after graduating. I took any work at the time – from “pcb soldering” to “reporting analyst” while applying for all of the “engineering” roles that i could find.
The first “engineering” role that i managed to get was as an Evaluation Engineer. This was another term for Tester. 🙂
Needless to say, I fell in love with the role and have been in this industry ever since.
I didn’t plan on ‘getting into IT’ at all; my first choices of profession were pathologist, biochemist, chemical engineer or food technologist. Websites, computers and games were a hobby, and nothing more. Pathologist and biochemist seemed to be a bit out of my league back then and I started Chemical Engineering, but… chemistry (or actually the physics part) turned out to be too difficult and I had to leave the study for chemical engineer and after two years of studying for food technologist, I lost interest in the profession as a whole. I just didn’t see myself pasteurizing milk my whole life and I hated the fact that I saw microbes and food hazards everywhere. I ended up studying ‘IT- Interaction Design’, a study full of creativity, psychology and IT. The study was developed out of necessity to approach IT from the human side (in contrast to technology or business approaches) and it was right up my ally.
After graduating I started at a small consultancy company where I was responsible for the eCommerce propositions and products, I also developed them since we were so small. After a while I started my own company (Lillith – seductive webdesign), but when I got to the point that I had to invest very big or stop; I got scared and stopped. I started working at a bailiff as programmer (Progress), but as it turned out, I was much better at designing and translating the business needs from wish/question to FO and TO and since there wasn’t anyone doing that I picked up this role and… there it was: when I got the ‘ready’ from the programmers I invited the requester to run through the software to -indeed- test the software and give the OKAY. Now I know it’s a -sort of- acceptance test, but back then it was just part of the release procedure.
So …I kind of gradually slipped into testing. I remember though when I got my first job that held the actual title of tester, I disdained it. I took it since the market for IT personnel was not very good (the bailiff was sued because the owners had used third money to pay for cars and holidays, so my job there was about to end) and I figured I could always look for opportunities in other divisions when I was ‘in’. That was in 2004, when I started at Capgemini and – you might already have guessed- I didn’t look for the other opportunities. I have only recently changed jobs, closer to home and into the role of (test) team leader, but still active in testing and I can’t imagine to ever completely leave the craft.
Its kind of Jumping from Trainee role to Testing Role. I joined my first company : ITC Infotech Bangalore – And after few months, I was sent for training on Testing.. And Journey started as a Tester. Its been a new learning, As a developer – I saw : Teams who performing programming, has only idea of the individual modules. But Tester needs to know – IN and OUT of complete project and was a Lone Tester. It was challenging and Learning out from many sources.
Now at present, I am working as Software Tester with a team, Understanding how to work in a team of testers – having different indivuduality.
All the above, Only criteria is taking oath as a tester : I will provide Quality Product 🙂
I have been in IT in several roles since the early ninetees, but mainly development. During a training I came accross structural testing and it intruiged me. In 2006 I decided that it was time to go do something else than I did. I replied on the first hit in the vacancy bank of the company I am working for and got the job. It was my first testing job.
I evolved into testing. I started out from school in the career advisors office because I had wanted to be just like my dad, a BBC Camera man. Unfortunately competition and standards were very high and having a well respected camera man as a father only gets your foot in the door, you still have to push if open and enter on your own merits. After my 3rd interview and final rejection I walked into the career officers office looking for what else I could do.
As it happened, on her desk, she had an opportunity for an assessment workshop for GEV Plessey Telecoms that very week. After testing well I started on their ‘Commissioning Engineer’ program. In retrospect, and context of testing, a Commissioning Engineer is a System of Systems Tester come Operations Engineer and UAT Test Lead in one person. I trained to test the installation of Digital Telephone Exchanges, rectify problems found and then run through the final demo/test phase with the customer to get sign off and handover. At the time I didn’t realise this was testing, I was trained to commission a large computer that routed telephony.
I then spent a while in operations maintaining the equipment I’d previously supplied, but as the small cable company I worked for was brought out and the simple operations role, or configuring, installing, upgrading, fault finding, developing, analysing, testing, etc was devolved to board swapper I looked around the new larger company for a more challenging role. With the upcoming catastrophe that never happened for the millennium I found work in the test centre of Cable and Wireless, running the equipment, testing it, and supporting projects in their assessment and test cycles. As with any good worker I became to valuable in the ‘traditional’ switches to be trained up on the new technology. So I left and fell in with a sorry bunch: A team of out right Software Testers for a start up company. I knew 2 of the people already employed there, so that’s how I was introduced to the role. After 2 years the start up, a developer lead company, failed and I was let go. It was now that I decided to find out what I’d been doing and booked myself a ISTQB Foundation course and never looked back.
I’ve tested Telephone exchanges, video conference software, Automatic call distribution, Call Center Display software, EMail Security, Web Edge Security, Email manipulation tools, Secure Enterprise level deployments with software deployment/OS lockdown/networking/server-client/firewalls etc, and now ITIL Services.
I have always maintained that if you can learn a new product testing is testing, inputs should product defined outputs. What happens in the middle is detail. It’s how you approach the job that’s important, not the job. If you approach it right the job is a detail.
Saying that, the approach has changed and evolved with me over the last 20 years and more so over the last 10. Testing is still evolving and becoming sentient, but it has a long way to go and I hope to be there with it, leading/following/learning/teaching and developing.
It starts with ‘I like to break things’ and ‘I like to upset developers’. But then it matures to become, ‘I like to help prevent a catastrophe’ (I want to save the world), and ‘I want to help developers be their best and produce a slice of heaven’
I’ve only been involved in software testing for two years, and I love it!!
From an early age I loved solving problems and computers and found it was only natural that I would become a programmer. Straight from school without any qualifications, I worked for an insurance company as a COBOL programmer – On the job training was the in thing back in 1990 – for 2 years until the recession kicked in whereby I decided to go to university. I wanted to become a software engineer as C, and C++ was gradually coming onto the scene, but as I didn’t have the qualifications, I had to sit a series of exams in a multitude of disciplines. I past and went on to sit a Computer Science degree majoring in Software Engineering at Leeds.
When I graduated, went to work for EDS (Now Hewlett Packard.) in London as a junior programmer working on a very large project for LloydsTSB – It was a very challenging role and felt it was a good choice of company to start my career.
As I become more confident and experienced, I went on to bigger projects and worked on a UK goverment projects – DVLA and the Benefits Agency. I also worked in the cirty for 2 years developing message encryption systems for inter bank financial communications. My enthusiasm for software engineering started to wain 8 years ago when I worked for a horrible company that was constantly bitching about their developers not working hard enough – stress levels went through the roof and I was eventually hospitalised for 3 weeks because of the environment that I was working in. Things had to change – I wasn’t prepared to keep putting myself through this. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I asked my friends and colleagues what they thought was my strengths and many of them said testing!! Pah!! You gotta be kidding me – I loathed testers as a software engineer!! They coming around saying this and that about what you had done was wrong!!!!
Anyway, it didn’t enter my mind and continued going from job to job as a software engineer knowing that hand on heart I was no longer interested – I needed a way out – but also needed the money and it was pretty good as a contractor!
Anyway in my current job, I joined as a senior software engineer working on some very complex problems with telecommunications. So much so I was out of my depth – my colleagues working on the team were Dr’s and Masters students and was about to walk out when my Software Development manager offered me a lifeline – Testing!! What is it with testing??!!?? Anyway I took it and looked elsewhere for a software development job. Even though I now hated programming, I wasn’t in no mood in becoming a tester! Darn!! No way!! Forget it!!
Anyway, I sat there at my desk prodding keys into the computer – day in day out! Fantastic, what a mind numbing job!Eventually something give way, the results didn’t look correct! OMG, my combination of inputs resulted in a bug. I found my first bug!!!
If I put a little more thought into this testing lark, I wonder how many bugs I can get – After about a month of thinking seriously about ways I can break the software I racked up more bugs than anyone on our team – including seasoned testers!! My testing manager was ecstatic about my new enthusiasm and as my reputation gained, my software manager struggled to keep me on his team as another testing manager from another team took note and wanted me to work on their new project.
I am now ISTQB qualified (Cough, sorry!) , I sat my BBST, which I passed and I work freelance, in my free time, working for startups in testing their software.Even though I had an opportunity to go into testing earlier, I kick myself very hard for not taking it up then as I now view software testing as my calling card in life. I still have a lot to learn, and reading constantly about different testing techniques, but the diffence is that I enjoy reading books from Marick, Bach, Crispin, Bolton and a few more exceptional influencers rather than books from notable programming gurus that constantly enabled me to sleep long hours!
In university I studied Interactive Multimedia and Design, 3rd year required me to complete a 11 month industrial placement. I applied for a frontend developer role in a leading software company in Dublin but when I started there was a testing role available (which I took). After I completed 4th year of uni I returned to the same company I was at during my placement year for just under 2 years. I decided to do some traveling and worked in Sydney for a leading independent digital marketing company testing a wide range of websites and applications. I am looking forward to returning to testing once I get back to Ireland.
All in all I stumbled into Testing but I am so happy I did. 😀
I started working in IT as finished my IT studies, first as sysadmin jr after as dwh developer. at that time I was in a small and very young team of consultants, and I was the one with no fear to go around meeting with managers, stakeholders and customers. it was a short step, I was involved full time in Testing (expecially exploratory testing, requirement collect and UAT). it was a kind of stumbling, but I liked it. nowadays I’m involved in a strong Agile environment and I’m trying to recover my development skills. because it’s ok with managing project, people and requirements, but I need to have hands on things to be happy in my everyday working.
I started computing in my childhood. Being a user of several Sinclair computers (anyone remembers those? the ZX-81, Spectrum and QL), I started programming at around the age of 10. First I wanted to become a vet, but soon I discovered that being a programmer was not only a hobby but you could also earn money with it.
After studying computer science, I programmed and designed for several years, but every time I got in a discussion with project leaders. They wanted me to deliver my part of the software but I wanted to improve it a bit further… writing some more unit-tests, making sure the code is maintainable, measuring the performance. One of those project leaders asked me to become a tester of a development team, and there I discovered that I am really more interested in the quality of the software, than writing the software myself.
Since then (now about 12 years ago) I am working in testing, with a special interest in test automation.
And still I am considering myself very happy…. Testing is my hobby and passion, and there are people/firms that pay me for doing it! 😀Since I was at primary school I knew I wanted to be a software tester. While other boys and girls were dreaming of being a fireman, nurse, soldier, vet or policeman, I told everybody who wanted to hear: “when I grow up, I want to be a software tester”! Sounds convincing? not really eh? Sure I don’t believe it myself when I hear a story like that. Although a lot of job applicants I have interviewed over the last few years put on a story along those lines…
I always had an interest in computers but never thought of it as a career.
And yes, I also got involved in software testing by accident. 16 years ago now; never looked back 🙂After graduating from University,I got a summer Internship with Pearson Vue to work as a UAT tester for a Road Transport Authority Project. The role was originally meant to be for 3 months but because I was doing so well they extended my contract for another 3 months. When the contract was about to come to an end, I started applying for testing roles and I got another role immediately. Since then I have not looked back.
Hi
I started my IT career by studying to be a developer but couldnt find a job after graduating and had to resort to being a networking guy. After a few years moving up the ladder to eventually doing software support I found a job where testing was a sideline functiona as part of the support role.
I tested accounting software mostly. I then immigrated to NZ and for the past 3 years I’ve been the QA Team Lead at my company managing testing on large multi-million dollar projects using technologies such as .NET, SAP, Biztalk, K2, BObj, Sharepoint and a few others.
I love the management and team lead aspect of my job but still get stuck into the nitty gritty of testing.
Since being a tester I have upskilled by doing my ISTQB Foundation course and Advanced Test Manager course, as well as Business Process Improvement course.
I love what I do!This questions made me smile…… totally by accident!
I was working in the business and got involved with some UAT. I enjoyed testing and decided to stay. I then moved over to functional system test as a test executioner and worked my way up through the ranks. So my route is a bit stange and I very much bring business focus to the testing world, which is so important espesially when working with offshore suppliers…….. my saga continues……!!!
Although I always wanted to be software developer, after finishing Computer Science I worked as system/network administrator. On this position I spent several years in two different environments, at the local university and bank. While working in the banking business the wish to become software developer led me to, at a time small but ambitious, software development company.
In this company the first project I got wAas to implement software for clinical analyzers. There were different instruments in the testing lab, which I used everyday to gain domain knowledge. However, soon it became obvious that I am revealing more bugs in the existing software than I was able to write new code. At the same time, the team wanted to increase the effort put to testing. And there it was, a chance to learn something new….
By series of unexpected events I became software tester. Different skills acquired on previous jobs, of course, helped a lot.
Today, I still consider software testing as my primary role/activity. It allows me to work on both, technical and social, skills.I’ve been a tester all my life, but got paid only in the last 9 years.
I’ve been involved in various Financial, Banking, Healthcare, Gaming, Betting, Networking & Mobile business areas, owning a wide variety of roles from Tester, Test Manager, Principle QA and currently Test Architect.Highly motivated in building quality driven teams and processes, with high focus on process improvement and product quality. While much of my experience is in company based products, I understood and started to work with outsourcing companies, providing consultancy and implementation of various quality processes.
My responsibilities include definition, implementation and monitoring of test strategies and test approaches for various clients and projects. I work closely with clients on-site and also provide remote support upon request. I helped large companies in defining tooling and approaches to support a healthy and productive testing approach, involving manual, automation and performance test activities.
Experience has taught me to build strong relationships with all stakeholders and shareholders of an organization. I have the ability to work with both business and technical teams with enables me to drive in business and technical terms the teams to a clear and successful scope.
I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I have been involved in testing for my entire IT career.
I was lucky enough to get a placement year whilst at University working for the Ministry of Defense in the UK. There were 2 jobs going, one programing job and one testing job, at the time I wanted programing job (as I had no idea what testing was.) However I was offered the testing job, and spent a year testing systems for the MoD and having a great time using at the time some pretty cutting edge tools at the time like T-Plan for test management and Automator for test automation.. During this time if realized that a) I was no good at programing and b) I really loved testing stuff.
There was consulting organization working with the MOD at the time and they offered me a job once I finished my course, and as they say the rest is history and 17 years later I am still involved testing, working in Australia had Testing Practice head for a large organization.
I’m a business analyst who started life as a bedroom programmer at the age of 11. So, I never really got “into” testing at an early stage. However, in recent times whilst working in a multi-lingual environment, I realised that testing brings an incredible advantage & skill set to the IT Project. Now, it’s my mission to see testing pushed more and more as an integrated unit of analysis and software engineering combined. The motivation is simple: cut costs, deliver more, deliver cheaper and deliver higher quality.
In the old days, at school we used the first personal computers for the first steps in CAD design (AutoCAD 1…) and with some friends we played a little with the ZX-Spectrum. When I started working at a trailer manufacturer, end of eighties, I became involved in developing their ISO-9000 quality system. When, after some years, I moved to another company, again I was involved in the quality system. That company was kind of innovative by using barcodes for ERP, and there I ‘interfered’ with anything with a keyboard.
Late nineties I switched to an IT company (CMG, now CGI) where I started in software testing using TestFrame. After several years working as a test analyst in test automation projects, I became a regular trainer of TestFrame courses. During the years my role changed to test co-ordinator.At some time I moved to an inssurance company (as a test analyst again) to get some mnore time for my family. There, with our team, we improved and structured the testing process. I became test co-ordinator again, and managed a whole range of release of the life insurrance systems.
However, I missed providing courses, and could not get a formal test improvement role. So after some years, I swithed to Improve Quality Services.
I started directly as test process manager at a healthcare systems manufacturer. Got involved in an FDA audit, and learned a lot.
From that point on, I’m involved in testing safety critical systems: ranging form X-ray systems, medical service tools, molecular diagnositics systems, up to road tunnels. In roles from consultant, tester, auditor to test architect.
I became a trainer again, now providing a wide range testing courses. TMap, ISTQB (from Foundation to Expert level), but I’m not limited to structured testing.And that’s where I’m currently still am: test consultant, test architect, trainer, coach, but also curious and still learning!
Hello, my name is Rui Vieira, I have 24 years old, I’m Portuguese, I graduated in Information Systems Engineering, on University of Minho, and my first experience with software testing was started on enterprise Primavera BSS, in this moment I am working with Testing automation about desktop aplications. I am working in the software testing for about 1 year, and hope to increase my knowledge in this forum, and contribute my small experience.
I was working in an office, absolutely bored when one day my manager approached me wondering if I would be interested in a couple of month’s secondment to another department. They needed someone to teach them the area of the software that I knew inside out. “What’s the other department?” I asked. “Testing” my manager relied. “Testing? What’s that?” I asked, totally baffled. I never went back to my old department, 2 months soon turned into a permanent job. I fell head over feet for testing and finally felt I had found my place, somewhere that fitted me rather than me trying to adapt to fit somewhere.
Why am I still testing now? Because my interest and passion for testing grows stronger every day. I am currently testing what is probably the most awesome software I have encountered to date. I have been involved from the very beginning and helped shape the software into the success it is today. I enjoy the pressures of gearing up for a release and successfully giving the customer great quality software. There is still so much for me to learn and there will never come a day when I think I know it all.
There are times I still get bored. Sometimes I think I’d happily sacrifice my nearest and dearest if it meant I didn’t have to do another round of regression testing 😉
I was working as a DBA/programmer at an engineering firm. We were a beta site for the integration of MS Project 2002 Server and what was known at the time as MS Solomon, an accounting system. After working on this particular project with the Microsoft team, I was hooked on the entire aspect of testing. That was 12 years ago.
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