People in Testing Q&A with Ryan Arsenault

Ryan Arsenault - Adventures in QA

This time in the “People in Testing” series, I had the chance to interview Ryan Arsenault who is a Community Manager at uTest. Ryan is working with more than 175,000 software testers from around the world and he has a different view of the software testing industry. I am really glad to get the chance to interview him and to provide his answers in this post to get an idea what other people think of software testers.

Daniel: What is currently your biggest challenge at uTest?

Ryan: I would say that like with any community — especially with ours in how fast we’ve grown with over 175,000 software testers now — the biggest challenge is always providing the content and context to keep people engaged.

How do you match paid projects to the testers strengths, interests, and often devices while simultaneously providing them with opportunities to expand their professional network and career? It’s a daunting challenge, but one that our team is doing an amazing job of, along with our uTester moderators. It also helps that we have some exciting things in the works for later in the year that will continue to allow us to engage at a deep level with our testers as we scale as a community.

You are working together with software testing experts. Have you ever considered to become a software tester?

I’ve never considered becoming one because they’re so much better at it than I ever could be — as they say, I should ‘stick to my day job.’ That being said, working with them for almost two years now at uTest has given me a deep appreciation for what software testers do everyday.

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Reading Recommendations # 14

Reading Recommendations - Adventures in QA

The 14th issue of my software testing reading recommendations contains five blog posts and one podcast. There are very interesting posts dealing with the topics that more end-to-end tests are not efficient, an introduction to security testing with Kali Linux and how to improve testing by Gojko Adzic.

There is a great post from Joel Montvelisky about peripheral vision and peripheral testing, a post from Johanna Rothman is dealing with no estimates and as usual the podcast from Stephen & Dan is always worth listen to. This time the topic is “The Right Thing vs. The Thing Right”.

My favorite posts of this issue is the one from Google about “Just Say No to More End-to-End Tests” and the post about peripheral vision and peripheral testing.

Enjoy reading the posts.

Google Testing Blog: Just Say No to More End-to-End Tests

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My Testing Tools

Mobile Testing Tools - Adventures in QAIn this post I want to give you some insights in my daily working life as a mobile tester especially which tools I use to test mobile apps. I got ask this question several times while attending conferences or I have been asked via eMail. Which tools are you using for mobile testing. In this post I want to give you the answer to this question.

One remark, the tools I am using in my current project are best for my current situation but this must not be the case for you and your project. Please keep this in mind and don’t just use the tools I am using. This might not be the best fit for your project and your software development environment.

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uTest University

uTest University - Adventures in QA

This post is for all software testers who want to improve their testing skills in various fields. uTest created the uTest university with more than 160 testing courses including webinars, presentations and many more. There are courses for test automation, mobile testing, security testing, load and performance testing, UX, localization testing as well as manual … Read more

Reading Recommendations # 13

Reading Recommendations - Adventures in QA

The 13th issue of my software testing reading recommendations got a redesign. There is a new header image indicating the reading recommendations and furthermore every post I recommend is presented with a link preview and a short description of the post. I hope you like the new design, comments and feedback are very welcome!

This time I recommend 7 blog posts from great bloggers from around the world. There are posts dealing with the topics if software test automation will kill off testers, a nice post from Dan Ashby about a really questionable ISTQB question. Rob Lambert wrote about the 10 reasons why being a scrum master sucks, another post is dealing with how to start a testing challenge. Katrin Clokie is writing about the testing hierarchy in agile, there is another post about product risks and testing.

And my favorite post in this issue is the guest blog post from Derrick Lam at the testmunk blog about how Flipboard mastered the transition from manual to automated UI testing for their mobile apps.

Enjoy reading the posts.

BBC Academy – Technology – Will automated testing kill off the tester? The increasingly prevalent role of automated tests in recent years has led many to question the continuing necessity of the tester. Are the days of the tester as a specialist role numbered?

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