Anyone about in Software Testing?

Anyone about in Software Testing?

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BlindandLost

Original Poster:

188 posts

149 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
Hi all! I’m after a bit of advice about getting into software testing and I’m hoping that there are some testers/managers/recruiters around that could share their thoughts...

First a bit of relevant background about myself: I’m currently a QA Team Leader in the games industry. I’ve worked in games for about 12 years and I’ve been a Team Leader for the last 8 years. I’ve worked in functional and online/network testing and I have a fair bit of compliance testing experience, gained mostly from online/network testing.

I’d like to make the move into testing “serious” software, but I’m finding it difficult to get anywhere. The main question I have is: How are games testers viewed in the software testing industry and would anyone consider hiring someone with my background and experience?

Is there anything I can do to give myself a better chance of getting a job? I’m looking into getting ISTQB certified (Foundation level to start with) in the near future, but is there anything else I can do?

Also, I’m not sure how to tailor my CV for a testing role. As you can imagine with the amount of time I've worked in games, everything on my CV is games related. It’s also quite heavily biased towards the extra Team Leader tasks and skills that I have and use, rather than testing. This is because the vast majority of my daily work isn’t actually testing any more. I realise I’ll probably have to aim for entry level positions, but I’m not 100% sure on what I should highlight or leave out on my CV given my current job.

Sorry for the long post. Any and all advice/ideas are welcome and will be gratefully received.

Thanks smile.

Mammasaid

3,780 posts

96 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
BlindandLost said:
Hi all! I’m after a bit of advice about getting into software testing and I’m hoping that there are some testers/managers/recruiters around that could share their thoughts...

First a bit of relevant background about myself: I’m currently a QA Team Leader in the games industry. I’ve worked in games for about 12 years and I’ve been a Team Leader for the last 8 years. I’ve worked in functional and online/network testing and I have a fair bit of compliance testing experience, gained mostly from online/network testing.

I’d like to make the move into testing “serious” software, but I’m finding it difficult to get anywhere. The main question I have is: How are games testers viewed in the software testing industry and would anyone consider hiring someone with my background and experience?

Is there anything I can do to give myself a better chance of getting a job? I’m looking into getting ISTQB certified (Foundation level to start with) in the near future, but is there anything else I can do?

Also, I’m not sure how to tailor my CV for a testing role. As you can imagine with the amount of time I've worked in games, everything on my CV is games related. It’s also quite heavily biased towards the extra Team Leader tasks and skills that I have and use, rather than testing. This is because the vast majority of my daily work isn’t actually testing any more. I realise I’ll probably have to aim for entry level positions, but I’m not 100% sure on what I should highlight or leave out on my CV given my current job.

Sorry for the long post. Any and all advice/ideas are welcome and will be gratefully received.

Thanks smile.
The fact that you've had QA experience in itself is a great start. I'd definitely suggest getting your ISTQB/ISEB Foundation Certificate 1st, don't bother going on a course, just teach yourself (most of it is common sense and knowing the correct terminology), then find a test centre to take the exam.

A couple of useful books (1 is enough)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundations-Software-Test...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1780172990/ref=pd_lpo_...

Without reading your CV, I'm not sure what I'd be able to critique it on, however I'd emphasise your experience and knowledge of different skills/toolsets AND how they helped you test in practice.

Speaking from experience as someone who only want into testing 10 years ago at the age of 37, the best skill set you need for testing is to be able to think laterally and 'outside of the box' (crap phrase I know), the ability to be an intermediary between the developers and the users/clients, i.e to translate 'Techie' to users and vice versa.

Personally, I'd not let the fact you'd been in games testing worry you, as long as you have a varied enough toolset and and an enquiring mind.

Good luck.

BlindandLost

Original Poster:

188 posts

149 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
Mammasaid said:
The fact that you've had QA experience in itself is a great start. I'd definitely suggest getting your ISTQB/ISEB Foundation Certificate 1st, don't bother going on a course, just teach yourself (most of it is common sense and knowing the correct terminology), then find a test centre to take the exam.

A couple of useful books (1 is enough)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foundations-Software-Test...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1780172990/ref=pd_lpo_...

Without reading your CV, I'm not sure what I'd be able to critique it on, however I'd emphasise your experience and knowledge of different skills/toolsets AND how they helped you test in practice.

Speaking from experience as someone who only want into testing 10 years ago at the age of 37, the best skill set you need for testing is to be able to think laterally and 'outside of the box' (crap phrase I know), the ability to be an intermediary between the developers and the users/clients, i.e to translate 'Techie' to users and vice versa.

Personally, I'd not let the fact you'd been in games testing worry you, as long as you have a varied enough toolset and and an enquiring mind.

Good luck.
Thanks for the reply! I'll definitely be getting one of those textbooks and taking the exam in the near future. Was thinking of going to the BCS centre for the exam, so will most likely end up with the BCS one.

It's good to hear from someone who's made the move into testing at a similar age to me (although I'm a bit older than you were). Encourages me that it might not be too late smile. If you don't mind me asking, what level job did you go into? If it was entry level, were you concerned at all about your age and going for entry level jobs?

You've certainly given me some food for though regarding my CV. I do have a skills section on it, but I think it might lean too heavily on the team leader side of things, rather than testing. Maybe I've been presumptuous that the testing skills go without saying, since I'm a TL.

I know what you mean about 'thinking outside the box'. It is a crap phrase but it's certainly something that's important in games testing as well. Trying to think about what could the end user possibly do or what would happen if I tried this? Etc...

Thanks again for the reply. It's certainly started me thinking of some ways to get my CV up to scratch smile.

Uncle John

4,271 posts

190 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
You say "serious software testing" but you need to target an industry and being from a gaming background I can see your dilemma.

Also types of testing, SIT, UAT, BUT etc etc

I have been involved in financial testing for 20 years now and I'm afraid I would not entertain a CV from another industry in my area.

So best advice would be to get a clear direction as to which industry you want to work in, gain some certificates (For me though the relevant experience counts over this)as you will need these so people know you are serious, and target the agencies that cater for those businesses.

Personally I'd love to work in gaming.....

Edited by Uncle John on Thursday 21st July 14:34

BlindandLost

Original Poster:

188 posts

149 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
Uncle John said:
You say "serious software testing" but you need to target an industry and being from a gaming background I can see your dilemma.

I have been involved in financial testing for 20 years now and I'm afraid I would not entertain a CV from another industry in my area.

So best advice would be to get a clear direction as to which industry you want to work in, gain some certificates (For me though the relevant experience counts over this)as you will need these so people know you are serious, and target the agencies that cater for those businesses.

Personally I'd love to work in gaming.....
Thanks for the reply! I'm not really fussed about what industry to go into to be honest. The only industry I'd already ruled out was financial testing funnily enough. I've read enough job listings to realise that's completely out of the question. Maybe it's something I do need to consider when looking for recruitment agencies. Thanks smile.

As for working in gaming, it's great but games QA is a very different prospect to any other form of testing really. We're definitely bottom of the food chain when it comes to development and the pay isn't great. For example, a couple of my direct reports have moved into entry level roles in security software testing and started on nearly £7000 more than I'm currently on! I tried to get into the company they moved to but their offices weren't accessible. They're not entirely sure how they got into the jobs either, so weren't much use for tips in getting into the industry either...

EDIT: Just noticed your edit about types of testing. Games testing in my current role is probably a mix of SIT and UAT, since we test all the component systems individually as well as a whole. We also test that the functionality is implemented as per its design specification. There's also a bit of network stress testing involved as well.

Edited by BlindandLost on Thursday 21st July 15:01

Mammasaid

3,780 posts

96 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
BlindandLost said:
Thanks for the reply! I'll definitely be getting one of those textbooks and taking the exam in the near future. Was thinking of going to the BCS centre for the exam, so will most likely end up with the BCS one.

It's good to hear from someone who's made the move into testing at a similar age to me (although I'm a bit older than you were). Encourages me that it might not be too late smile. If you don't mind me asking, what level job did you go into? If it was entry level, were you concerned at all about your age and going for entry level jobs?

You've certainly given me some food for though regarding my CV. I do have a skills section on it, but I think it might lean too heavily on the team leader side of things, rather than testing. Maybe I've been presumptuous that the testing skills go without saying, since I'm a TL.

I know what you mean about 'thinking outside the box'. It is a crap phrase but it's certainly something that's important in games testing as well. Trying to think about what could the end user possibly do or what would happen if I tried this? Etc...

Thanks again for the reply. It's certainly started me thinking of some ways to get my CV up to scratch smile.
I was quite fortunate in that I was in client management when the role I was in suddenly became redundant and I was asked if I'd like to become a tester. I knew nothing about testing at this point, and was lucky to be give a couple of months to get up to speed on testing, and take the Foundation course + exam. I started as an entry level, however quickly found myself becoming a Test Manager leading a team of up to 10 testers both on and offshore. I suppose that I stood up to be counted when the previous TM found herself out of favour.

I was also very fortunate to be made redundant 15 months ago, then find a test job just 5 minutes from home for the same salary.

In terms of technical skills, everything is learn-able, even to an old codger like me, I've gone from an Unix/Oracle environment to a Visual Studio/AngularJS/C#/MS SQL Server environment and picked it up fairly easily. To be honest if most of the role is System testing, curiosity of more important, however the trend is somewhat towards automated testing, though that will never replace fully the soft skills of a human...

BlindandLost

Original Poster:

188 posts

149 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
Mammasaid said:
I was quite fortunate in that I was in client management when the role I was in suddenly became redundant and I was asked if I'd like to become a tester. I knew nothing about testing at this point, and was lucky to be give a couple of months to get up to speed on testing, and take the Foundation course + exam. I started as an entry level, however quickly found myself becoming a Test Manager leading a team of up to 10 testers both on and offshore. I suppose that I stood up to be counted when the previous TM found herself out of favour.

I was also very fortunate to be made redundant 15 months ago, then find a test job just 5 minutes from home for the same salary.

In terms of technical skills, everything is learn-able, even to an old codger like me, I've gone from an Unix/Oracle environment to a Visual Studio/AngularJS/C#/MS SQL Server environment and picked it up fairly easily. To be honest if most of the role is System testing, curiosity of more important, however the trend is somewhat towards automated testing, though that will never replace fully the soft skills of a human...
Thanks for that. Very interesting smile. I got into games testing after discovering that I hated programming at uni. It seemed that testing was the only way for me into games. As it turns out, I have a knack for breaking software tongue out. I certainly didn't think I'd still be doing it 12 years later!

Automated testing is something I have no exposure to unfortunately, as it's not a method that's often used (if at all) in publishing side QA in games. Certainly something to learn about though as there are a lot of opportunities for automation testers. I agree though, you can't replace a human tester and their innate urge to find unusual ways to break things...

Thanks to everyone for the replies so far! I think I've got a few things clear in my head now and have an idea on how to proceed from here.

miniman

24,827 posts

261 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
Drop me over your CV. We have a number of test roles open.

james at James-Skinner dot com

dcb

5,834 posts

264 months

Thursday 21st July 2016
quotequote all
BlindandLost said:
Automated testing is something I have no exposure to unfortunately, as it's not a method that's often used (if at all) in publishing side QA in games.
Automated testing gets used a lot in safety critical software
(i.e. get it wrong - people die).

As a developer, I usually like to have an automated test case
for every line of code I write. That way, I can automatically test
all the software that I write.

A test suite can chug away for hours or days making
sure no new faults occur. This is often required for software
certification in the automotive / aerospace / medical / nuclear fields.

I can understand that this is a "white box" approach, as opposed
to the usual "black box" approach of just exercising the code.

Much more detail in Les Hatton's seminal book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Safer-High-Integrity-Safe...

davek_964

8,796 posts

174 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
dcb said:
A test suite can chug away for hours or days making
sure no new faults occur.
OP : You should definitely get a bit clued up on automated testing, since it is used in many software fields - it is simply more efficient to run tests overnight / over the weekend, regardless of whether your software is keeping people alive or simply sending your electricity usage on your smart meter. However, I think the important thing is having the testing "mindset" - which I assume you have - automated testing is more about knowing how to use the automation software and build test plans etc, and that will vary from job to job. In my current place, we write test software - hence automation is really running our own stuff. In my previous job, we wrote our own automation suite for testing our code - so automation as a principle is good to understand, but it will often be bespoke to the particular s/w.

One key thing to understand is that automation is not the panacea of testing it may seem. Yes, it can run over days and weeks - however, it cannot create time and deadlines only ever get shorter. As software grows, so does the number of regression test cases and the limit is usually time - whether it's being tested by people or automated. You soon reach the point where you have to decide <which> test cases you will run and when you can run them, rather than just being able to test "everything".

dcb

5,834 posts

264 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
davek_964 said:
One key thing to understand is that automation is not the panacea of testing it may seem. Yes, it can run over days and weeks - however, it cannot create time and deadlines only ever get shorter. As software grows, so does the number of regression test cases and the limit is usually time - whether it's being tested by people or automated. You soon reach the point where you have to decide <which> test cases you will run and when you can run them, rather than just being able to test "everything".
Having to avoid doing some test cases you've written is a nasty one
- I try to avoid it if at all possible.

One way to reduce the problem is to make sure that the tests are separate and independent
to enable parallel testing.

For example, if you have 20,000 test cases and they take 16 days to run on a quad core
processor, but they are independent of each other, then buying another quad core, splitting
the tests into two and running both machines will get test time downto 8 days.

Have four quad cores at it, and test time goes downto four days. Fast enough
to have a weekly "heartbeat" test schedule.

Much more abut heartbeat style testing in this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Pressure-Time-Pro-B...

Yes, I know it is by Microsoft Press, but it's still a good book.



jammy_basturd

29,776 posts

211 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
dcb said:
As a developer, I usually like to have an automated test case
for every line of code I write. That way, I can automatically test
all the software that I write.
One per line?! That's crazy.

JohnStitch

2,900 posts

170 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
I've been a Test Manager for many years (worked my way up from the bottom) and have been able to make the transition between different industries, that's the main reason I stayed in testing i.e. because regardless of what the industry is, the principles are generally the same, unless you're really specialised in a particular area - I spent many years working in software testing for a rather large Finnish smartphone manufacturer (before they went kaput), and about 6 years ago found myself working in the financial industry, been contracting for the last few years swapping between the two.

As others have said, get your ISTQB Foundation - It's easy enough and if you've been working in testing for a while you should know it without having to do much revision - Many companies won't touch you unless you have this.

In your CV I would suggest focussing on the testing skills you have rather than the jobs (obviously you still need to show the jobs you've done) - On the front page of my CV I have a section listing Key Skills - A good place to list all the buzzwords people will be looking for when searching for CVs - So instead of your CV just looking like it is Gaming focussed, you can list here the usual stuff like Functional Testing, Integration Testing, Performance Testing, Defect Management, Waterfall, Agile etc......It seems to work for me, and gives any recruiter a quick and easy list of skills that they are looking for....

Also, try not to pigeon-hole yourself into gaming - You will have picked up lots of experience of situations that every test team encounters, regardless of industry, try to think of those (particularly how you dealt with them) as they will be quite a large focus of any interview.

All you need is that one break into a different industry and your career path will take a turn - I'd been working in the smartphones for years and it was really exciting for a while seeing all the new technologies coming along, and I didn't really want to go into finance, but with the mobile convergence over the last few years it worked well for me and I managed to get straight into mobile payments - This has since spread to many other different types of non-mobile related projects - I just needed that foot in the door...

Good luck

P.S> I've always fancied doing games testing - Wanna job swap? smile

Edited by JohnStitch on Friday 22 July 08:47

Mammasaid

3,780 posts

96 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
jammy_basturd said:
dcb said:
As a developer, I usually like to have an automated test case
for every line of code I write. That way, I can automatically test
all the software that I write.
One per line?! That's crazy.
Test driven development, it's a very strong way of working, especially in agile.

http://agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html



davek_964

8,796 posts

174 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
dcb said:
davek_964 said:
One key thing to understand is that automation is not the panacea of testing it may seem. Yes, it can run over days and weeks - however, it cannot create time and deadlines only ever get shorter. As software grows, so does the number of regression test cases and the limit is usually time - whether it's being tested by people or automated. You soon reach the point where you have to decide <which> test cases you will run and when you can run them, rather than just being able to test "everything".
Having to avoid doing some test cases you've written is a nasty one
- I try to avoid it if at all possible.

One way to reduce the problem is to make sure that the tests are separate and independent
to enable parallel testing.

For example, if you have 20,000 test cases and they take 16 days to run on a quad core
processor, but they are independent of each other, then buying another quad core, splitting
the tests into two and running both machines will get test time downto 8 days.

Have four quad cores at it, and test time goes downto four days. Fast enough
to have a weekly "heartbeat" test schedule.

Much more abut heartbeat style testing in this book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Under-Pressure-Time-Pro-B...

Yes, I know it is by Microsoft Press, but it's still a good book.
It's not always that simple. For pure PC software, perhaps.

For embedded software - or PC software that connects to external devices - it is simply not possible to multiplex up to this degree.

BlindandLost

Original Poster:

188 posts

149 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
Many thanks to everyone that's replied smile. As a few have mentioned, getting ISTQB certified is a must. The textbook is ordered and I'll be aiming to take an exam within the next month.

Automation testing is something I need to get learning about. I hope I'd be able to get into a job and learn on the job with someone who knows what they're doing. Having said that, it can't harm to do a bit of self-tutoring and be able to talk about it in an interview...

I'm going to update my CV this weekend. As a few have said (and I knew before) that it needs to be more testing focussed instead of gaming focussed. It's not surprising it's like that as I've been in the industry for so long and applied for games jobs in that time. It needs addressing though, so I'm going to get into it this weekend and start a concerted effort to find some jobs to apply for next week.

miniman said:
Drop me over your CV. We have a number of test roles open.

james at James-Skinner dot com
You should have mail smile.

sdkrc

116 posts

106 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
Which specific industry are you hoping to get into?

Jumping between industries is absolutely possible. All depends on the hiring manager and circumstance.

I'm in investment banking and think it's very hard to get even a sniff here without some programming experience/knowledge.

Retail banks hire lots of people internally from their call centres with product knowledge.

100% you'll need the ISTQB foundation.

dcb

5,834 posts

264 months

Friday 22nd July 2016
quotequote all
davek_964 said:
It's not always that simple. For pure PC software, perhaps.

For embedded software - or PC software that connects to external devices - it is simply not possible to multiplex up to this degree.
Nonsense. It's only software. The clue is in the name.
It can be made to do anything.

It's been standard technology for at least 20 years
to my certain knowledge in the Linux / Unix world, whether
the target is embedded or not. Not all the computing world
is the closed world of Microsoft and PCs.

And in cases where the hardware won't play nicely with testing
requirements, maybe due to timing constraints, it is always possible
to have a test harness to simulate the hardware in software.

I was doing this back in 1985 (!) for embedded software for telephone
exchanges running on 80188 hardware. The whole test suite
ran in about an hour on a PDP-11/40 host.

rustyuk

4,568 posts

210 months

Sunday 24th July 2016
quotequote all
I think you might find standard test roles quite boring after coming from a games environment.

If you do decided to jump, go straight for a contract role you should be able to get £250 \ £300 a day without too much trouble.

davek_964

8,796 posts

174 months

Sunday 24th July 2016
quotequote all
dcb said:
davek_964 said:
It's not always that simple. For pure PC software, perhaps.

For embedded software - or PC software that connects to external devices - it is simply not possible to multiplex up to this degree.
Nonsense. It's only software. The clue is in the name.
It can be made to do anything.

It's been standard technology for at least 20 years
to my certain knowledge in the Linux / Unix world, whether
the target is embedded or not. Not all the computing world
is the closed world of Microsoft and PCs.

And in cases where the hardware won't play nicely with testing
requirements, maybe due to timing constraints, it is always possible
to have a test harness to simulate the hardware in software.

I was doing this back in 1985 (!) for embedded software for telephone
exchanges running on 80188 hardware. The whole test suite
ran in about an hour on a PDP-11/40 host.
Yes, clearly you know best.

Of course you use PC based test harnesses, but some stuff still had to be done on target - and there is ALWAYS a limit in available hardware during development, especially if it's not your own hardware.

My point was simply that it is not usually possible to carry out all regression tests for each release and you have to limit your testing - and plan it - for maximum effect.

You apparently test every line of code you write for every release you make. Good for you, but I'll stick to the real world.