Kristin Jackvony - The Complete Software Tester Concepts, Skills, and Strategies for High-Quality Testing

The Complete Software TesterConcepts, Skills, and Strategies for High-Quality TestingKristin Jackvony

Copyright 2021 Kristin Jackvony

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by: Vanessa Mendozzi

Contents

Introduction

Why I Wrote This Book

I discovered my love for software testing in 2009 when, after being laid off from my job as a support person for a small tech start-up, I took a job as a quality assurance intern at another company. On my first day there, I realized that software testing was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I wanted to learn everything I could about software testing, but I found very few books that could teach me. I wound up learning through trial and error, reading blog posts, and talking with my co-workers.

Today there are some excellent books about specific areas of software testing, such as exploratory testing, Agile testing, and test automation, but I m not aware of any book that aims to be a complete reference on testing. I started blogging about testing in 2012, and my occasional posts turned into weekly posts in 2017. It occurred to me that these posts could serve as the foundation for a comprehensive book on testing, and The Complete Software Tester was born.

Who This Book Is For

This book is for anyone who cares about the quality of software. I wrote it with new software testers in mind; this is the book I wish I could have read when I was first starting out. You ll learn what to think about when manually testing an application, how web applications work, and how to create a test plan.

Veteran testers will also find helpful information in this book. Manual testers who want to start writing test automation will learn good coding practices and automation basics. Experienced testers will be able to fill gaps in their skill sets by learning about performance testing, security testing, mobile testing, and accessibility testing.

Finally, software developers who want to learn more about the practice of testing can read about techniques that will help them think like a tester. Testing and development are two very different skills, and developers who take the time to learn what to test will discover that they are now writing better code.

What s in This Book

This book is divided into 12 parts. Part I serves as an introduction to the importance of software testing and software testers. Part II discusses manual testing and all the potential bugs you can find through manually exploring an application.

Part III looks at how web applications work, from authentication to server-client interactions to HTML and CSS, because understanding the structure of an application can help you create better test scenarios. Part IV is devoted to API testing and includes step-by-step instructions for manual API testing with Postman.

In Part V we look at the special testing requirements for mobile applications. Parts VI, VII, and VIII focus respectively on security testing, performance testing, and accessibility testing, which are helpful skills for any tester who wants to completely test their application and differentiate themselves from other testers.

In Part IX we look at software development basics. Many testers come to the software testing field without a solid background in coding principles or knowledge of how to use tools like the command line or version control software. This section aims to fill in the knowledge gaps for those testers. Part X surveys many types of test automation and is filled with examples to demonstrate how they work.

Part XI is devoted to testing strategy. The most important quality of any tester is the ability to think of all the ways an application can possibly go wrong. Other important skills are the ability to prioritize testing needs and the ability to make good choices about the right testing methods to use. In this part of the book, you ll learn to organize your test plans, reproduce tricky bugs, and manage your test data.

Finally, Part XII covers the soft skills that all good testers need. Here you ll discover how to work effectively with software developers, get organized, manage your time, and be your own champion in your testing career.

It s my hope that you will find this book to be a helpful resource throughout your career, and that you ll refer to it again and again whenever you have a testing problem or want to improve your testing skills. Happy testing!

Note

Occasionally in this book I refer to the Contact List app. This is a test application that I wrote specifically for use with this book. You can find it at

https://thinking-tester-contact-list.herokuapp.com .

The API documentation for the app can be found at

https://documenter.getpostman.com/view/4012288/TzK2bEa8 .

Part I: Why Do We Test?

Chapter 1: Why We Test

Most software testers, when asked why they enjoy testing, will say things similar to the following:

I like to think about all the ways I can test new features. It s fun to come up with ways to break the software. I like the challenge of learning how all the parts of an application work together.

I certainly agree with all of those statements! Testing software is creative, fun, and challenging.

But this is not why we are testing. We test to learn things about an application to ensure that our end users have a good experience with it. Software is built to be used for something; if it doesn t work well or correctly, it is not accomplishing its purpose.

For example:

If a mobile app won t load quickly, users will stop using it or will delete the app from their phone. If a financial app suffers a security breach, the company that developed the app will lose customers and may even be sued for damages. If an online store has a bug that keeps shoppers from completing their purchases, the company will incur significant losses in sales.

There are even documented cases of people losing their lives because of problems with software. In the 1980 s, three patients died when the Therac-25 medical accelerator mistakenly delivered lethal radiation doses due to a race condition in the software.

So, while it s fun to find bugs, it s also extremely important to find them. And it s even more important to remember that the true test of software is how it behaves in production with real users. Often, testers keep their focus on their test environment because that s where they have the most control over the software under test.

But I have seen situations in which testers did this and then were surprised when users reported that the feature didn t work in production! This happened because they had hard-coded their environment variables to match the test environment, and they didn t bother to test the feature once it was released to production.

Having features that work correctly in production is only one aspect of quality. We also need to make sure pages load within a reasonable amount of time, data is saved correctly, and the system behaves well under times of high use.

Here are some questions to ask about any application you are testing:

Is it usable? Is it reliable? Is your data secure? Do the pages load quickly? Are API response times fast? Do you monitor production use, and are you alerted automatically if theres a problem? Can you search your application s logs for errors?

It s fun to test and find bugs. It s fun to check items off in test plans. It s fun to see test automation run and pass. But none of that matters if your end user has a poor experience with your application. That is why we test.

Chapter 2: Think Like a Tester

In 2017, I attended a large international computing conference where not a single workshop or presentation was focused on software testing. At this conference, I met computer science students who didn t even know software testing was a career!

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