Becoming a software tester

[BD10NNF]

Hi people. Sorry if this is the wrong section.

Anyway I'm wanting to be a software tester. I currently do some testing in my current role and enjoy it.

I am wanting to know what qualifications I would need. I'm currently looking to do these courses BCS/ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL) and BCS Certified Agile Tester. Would these be a good base for me to get a foot on the ladder for work?

Cheers

 

[BD10NNF]

At the moment I currently test the software looking for bugs and have to report them back to the devs. The only way I can explain it is that I test the app before it goes to BETA release. This is something I enjoy so there's no coding involved at all. I know that there are jobs out there that do this similar role. Not sure is this is more UAT testing or something.
Just need to know what I need to know before ending my current IT role.

Thanks for the advice so far.

 

[BD10NNF]

Having been a QA for 5 years now I can tell you that you don't need BCS/ISTQB at all - in fact it is seen, by a lot of testers I speak to, as a bit redundant and out of date now

Best advice to you would be to sit with the Dev's (if you get chance) and look at them creating the next version of the app that you will have to test, or a bug which will have to be tested. Learning how things hook together and how things are created will help you understand how stuff could go wrong, and that will benefit your testing

Where about's do you live? Here in Manchester there are lots of 'Tester Gatherings' via Meetup where QA's from all over gather together to talk about stuff etc. If you can get along to one of those and speak to people doing the job you will get a better idea of which direction you want to head in.

Also, I 'fell' into testing. No qualifications, nothing on my CV regarding IT or anything like that. The company I worked for at the time needed someone who had lots of knowledge of the company (I was a Staff Training Manager at the time) to look at a web site and compare it to the companies own. I spent a few days pulling this site apart and after that the IT Director wanted me to work with the other Tester in the company and offered me a job.

EDIT:


I would say you have a good start to become a general tester for mobile applications. The key thing really is to understand who the target audience is for the application and the company which the app is for.

I went from working as a tester for a car hire broker to working as a QA for a hotel booking web site - both are travel and both were for the general populations consumption. Knowing the industry and understanding the customer and some of the crazy stuff clients actually do, rather than what they are supposed to do, makes for a great tester.

Thanks. I'm in West Yorkshire so not that far.
The code side of things doesn't really interest me. It's mainly finding bugs and reporting them. Sounds boring to some people but to me I like fault finding hence me working on 1st line support.

The software that we use is an application on Windows computers. We have to install it on clients computers and when it goes wrong we do what we can to fix it. No coding is used at all.
I've been looking into an Agile course which includes SCRUM. Not sure if its the correct route I need to go down.

I definitely want to do BCS/ISTQB Certified Tester Foundation and a base. It might be a waste of money but at lease it is a base for me to start as I've only just recently started software testing/bug finding

 

[BD10NNF]

When I moved over from support I did a selenium with Java course which gave me enough knowledge to get started. I had no real programming knowledge apart from one unit at University. Maybe look into automation testing for windows applications and see if there are any free/cheap online courses that you can do.

I have very little knowledge in programming. I did visual basic back in college and that is it. Learnining

Having been a development team leader for 8 years I can tell you that there's a very evident difference in quality of testing between those who have been on the course and those who haven't imo. Yes sure you don't need it, especially in testing where let's be honest, sometimes PMs just want bodies to run tests and tick them as passed by the deadline. I on the hand, prefer to have code tested by people who understand equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, state transitions etc. and when it's appropriate to use these techniques. I don't believe these concepts will ever be redundant or out of date.

I definitely believe a foundation of knowing something and having the foundation qualification is better than not having it for those reasons.

I'm a "Software Test Engineer", The best testers don't always have such qualifications though a lot of them do, usually ISEB (BCS); but some just become good testers through experience.

I wouldn't say you "need" any such qualifications to get through the door. We hire people from pretty much any technical background. You might take one of these qualifications on the job to aid career progression.

Scripting languages will help, not necessarily python, our test-case libraries are almost entirely Perl or OO Perl. Learn one language, learn them all applies, so just show you know how to program.

Once I have the foundation I was looking at doing an Agile course this including some SCRUM in it. Once that was done I was going to look into JAVA as I have a dummies book at home that I can read.

 

[BD10NNF]

.........Another thing that you might want to look at are systems like Jura, Trello, LeanKit, VersionOne, Bugzilla etc. If you are familiar with these ticket/bug tracking systems that's always advantageous

Edit:


Sure, ISTQB will teach you test techniques, but you can learn these from other, cheaper resources and through exploratory testing

Thanks for this. There's a place that does a short course over I believe 3 days that goes through ISTQB. I don't mind paying for that. Yes it might seem pointless but when it comes down to either new work or current work. I can say look I went out on my own back and did this to improve myself. Shows drive and ambition.

At the moment we use JIRA to log bugs and get updates which is pretty good. I believe most places use this. I'll definitely look into learning Trello and the others as well.