There is this one ultimate type of people that I adore the most in my life: smart, but humble. This does not sound like anything rare, right? Yet it is. In tech world there may be tension, competition, even stress-caused forgetting that others are humans, too.
I always get my inspiration from people who want to lift others up rather than bring themselves up. An example here is people who honestly care how you’re doing and actually provide feedback on how you could improve. These people share ideas and their keys to success to anyone who is willing to learn. In my testing career, I was amazed to meet so many professionals wanting to help you improve: be it a colleague programmer willing to share their ideas on how you could create a better automation checks framework, respected experts in the field supporting you on Twitter or sharing their books for free.
This is how I came across How to thrive as a Web Tester by Rob Lambert: I really like Rob’s ideas on testing, especially on the social aspect of it, and a few weeks back I saw his tweet that you could download the book for free that day. I could not miss a chance: downloaded it immediately and actually read it in a few days.
“How to thrive as a Web Tester” is a collection of great tips and lessons learned by Rob Lambert who has been working in testing for more than 20 years. The book has two parts: social aspects of thriving as a tester and techniques on testing websites.
I found both parts great, but the first part was especially speaking to me. Rob shares a lot of realizations about work as a tester which are sometimes related to psychology and communication. Second part related to web testing had many practical tips which are especially useful for someone new in web testing. I really enjoyed reading the book and here is the summary of top 3 ideas I liked.
Top 3 my favorite lessons from “How to thrive as a Web Tester” by Rob Lambert
Be the best tester YOU can be
This point particularly spoke to me. We tend to compare ourselves to others constantly. Then sometimes we get unmotivated that we don’t know as much about something as person X does. Or we are not as smart as them or not as quick or not as good of a public speaker and this goes on… It is time to embrace ourselves for who we are. In the book Rob reminds us to confront our own beliefs on what a good tester is to us, not others. Where should we improve? How can we become the best version of OURSELVES? A brave advice that Rob is giving in the book is to avoid mediocrity in your workplace. In order to become the best version of yourself you must have an environment which allows you to experiment, fail, learn, succeed and grow. This means that you have to choose a healthy workplace which supports your growth.
Ask good questions
High quality questions generally lead to high quality answers. High quality questions are the hallmark of good testers.
I wrote down at least 5 quotes from “How to thrive as a Web Tester” which were related to questions. It really was something I aim to have at my work: ask more and by doing so, be more productive. Sometimes a question on implementation can open a lot of “we haven’t thought of that” and it saves a lot of time for you as a tester, too, because it all leads to conversation instead of many bug reports. In the end, we all are working for the same purpose – to build a high quality product.
It is not always around more testing
Sometimes there are tendencies to automate as much as we can, but this is not always necessary – automate where it makes sense. Also, your work can be more productive and faster if as mentioned above you ask questions and also if you use tools to test quicker.
What I liked a lot in the second part of the book was the suggestion to use various tools to ease testing. Rob has a support page for the book with all kinds of resources accessible to everyone and using tools is possibly a tip I would give to my younger self, too. A lot of times I have filled in text fields manually or done other test data preparation routine tasks which took a lot of time and were pretty error-prone. A way to a more productive testing can be as simple as having an extension on your browser which helps you fill in text input fields. One of my favorites is Bug Magnet Chrome extension by Gojko Adzic.
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