At the end of June, I received mail from Rosie Sherry about #30daysoftesting challenge . It was a good way to improve myself and try some interesting things I haven't done before, so I decided to take it on.
I'm a casual blogger. During the challenge, I put my progress on Twitter But as the 31st day of #30daysoftesting, I decided to do a blog post.
So here is my 30 Days of Testing list and a bit description around each day.
1. Buy one testing related book and read it by day 30
There were great suggestions about books all over twitter, some being here and here. I read a book by @eviltester , finished by Day 9 and quite enjoyed it.
2. Take a photo of something you are doing at work
The cup is from Secret Santa, coaster from some conference and I love drawing mind maps!
3. Listen to a testing podcast
I had heard about 'Testing in a pub' podcast beforehand so downloaded their latest episode. Test Talks is another podcast that was suggested on Twitter.
4. Share a testing blog post with a non-tester
I use Feedly for testing blog posts and to be honest, I follow too many to actually read them all. However, I shared these ones with my work colleagues:
- Maaret - my Speaking Easy mentor
- Software Testing Club Blogs
- James Bach - just because
- Michael Bolton - also just because
5. Read and comment on one blog post
Commented on TestPappy blog post about 'tacit knowledge'. Loved it and suggest you to read it.
6. Perform a crazy test
I did ask for suggestions from various people about what they define a crazy test. Some of the things they suggested are:
- Break data by using UI
- Test the same thing multiple times, but expect different result
- Blind fold yourself, spin 5 times around on your chair, and go hell for leather on the keyboard
- Drunk testing
- Midnight testing - wake up, do 15min of testing, go to sleep
- Soap opera testing
- Doing things that doesn't make sense
- Pressing many keys at the same time
- Dropping book on keyboard
- Fall asleep on keyboard
- Cat testing
My crazy test was asking my team to test lollipops and telling me what bugs they found with it.
7. Find an accessibility bug
I used to work for a company that tested screen reading with JAWS so I started with installing it and trying it out on our own website. I found few bugs around not being able to tab to the fields on the contact page and images missing alt tags.
Then I checked out #30daysoftesting Twitter feed to see what other tools were used as part of Day 7 and created a lightning talkaround it.
8. Download a mobile app, find 5 bugs and send the feedback to the creator
I downloaded Komoot - german cycling routes app. It's a great app for planning routes for cycling and I have used before, but it has some weird bugs so I raised 5 of them.
9. Create a mindmap
See day 2 photo above - there is a mind map of testing maps. Great quick drawing that helped me in quite a few projects.
10. Find an event to attend (online or face to face)
I have attended London Testing Clinics twice now and suggest it to anyone - both those who want to learn and those who want to teach. It's fantastic opportunity to discuss various topics and have fun!
11. Take a picture of your team
12. Doodle a problem
So during our call with a client, I doodled a decision tree for one of our projects. Not a great doodle, but still one :)
13. Find a user experience problem
Had a bit of a struggle with this one and actually completed it quite late. Was on a lookout for quite a while and spotted one.
There was a problem on one of the websites I tested that you could select various options and content would change, however, wouldn't give any visible feedback to the user.
14. Step outside of your comfort zone
I did a lightning talk about Accessibility (see day 7 slides) and had a discussion of why we need it, even if we aren't a big corporation.
15. Find a problem with an e-commerce website
Same as with the Day 13, I struggled with this. I have seen various bugs on Amazon before, but for some reason, I couldn't find any when I looked for them.
So I looked on eBay instead and found non-existent links to the sellers. Sorry, forgot to take a screenshot!
16. Go to a non-testing event
I went to Hyper Japan because I love Japanese culture.
17. Find and share a quote that inspires you
'If there is a will, there is a way' This has been my previous blog tagline and it truly inspires me. If you wish for something hard enough, you will find a way to get to it.
18. Find a broken link. And report it.
This wasn't a hard one at all. I just had to think back to that day's testing and found a missing link quickly enough. There was an email confirmation sent to a user that had a link leading to 404 page.
19. Find and use a new tool
As part of Accessibility testing / lightning talk, I used quite a few new tools. One that I really enjoyed was the Chrome plugin Spectrum.
20. Find a good place to perform some security tests
When people talk about security testing, we often think of hackers and how they hack our systems using various tools. Social Hacking is an area that is rarely discussed. I read up on it and thought of various ways of doing it, but that probably would be breaking a law.
Here is a suggested book .
21. Pair test with someone
Over the last month I have pair tested with various people. But one of the most notable and longest pair testing sessions was with our new project manager Sally. I believe pair testing is usable when you have to transfer knowledge or you have to work on a complex testing problem. Other than that I'm happy working on my own.
22. Share your favourite testing tool
My favourite testing tool is Windows Resizerfor Chrome. It helps me testing various mobile screens and it's easy to customise.
23. Help someone test better
I installed Jira Capture on my manager's computer and showed him how it works. This definitely helped him raise some issues easier.
24. Connect with a tester who you haven't previously connected with
Twitter is the best way to connect with other testers. Rosie recently posted a great post about women testers, so if you are looking for somebody to connect then check out this tweet.
25. Contribute to a testing discussion
It's no wonder that Pokemon Go has been a big hit recently, but it also has been full of bugs and frustration to any users. Here is one of them I answered.
26. Invite a non-tester to a test event
There are two events that I suggest for any non-testers to check out:
Shared it on twitter and to my non-tester work colleagues.27. Say something nice about the thing you just tested
Remember decision tree in the day 12 doodle? Implementation of it was very nice and I complemented the developer on it :)
28. Summarise an issue in 140 characters or less
BUG: Duplicate users appearing in admin that belong to two different organisations
29. Find an out by one error
If you are wondering what is 'out by one error', check wikipedia.
I couldn't find one so asked for help from a developer I know. He is working on accounting software and often getting errors in reports when date>start_date and doesn't actually include a start date.
30. Give someone positive feedback
I would say this is duplicate of day 27, but tried to give positive feedback to various people this month, so hope it counts.
31. Bonus: share your 30 day challenge experience on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or a blog post
I have been tweeting about it, but this is THE blog post.
