Going contracting

[nuclearsquash]

Hello,

I'm reacing the point in my career as a software tester, where i'm thinking of contracting. My goal is to be contracting by near as dammit this time next year, i will have by then a good range of experience, skills and qualifications. My question is though, how the hell do you start contracting, how do you make that leap, cos from this side of the fence it looks really bloody scary!

Any advice tips, tricks links etc warmly welcomed.

Andy

[nuclearsquash]

I'm currently working in an agile testing environment, with a big push towards automation via QTP primarily once our project gets into its rolling deployment after the initial release. I've been asked by my company to go to one of our consulting compaines to help them with the automation of some testing on our new big project, so i'm certainly due to get the experience there. My company is also pushing to get us trained up as well. I'm also about to start the Practitioners ISEB course (already have the first ISEB).

It is a big scary step, but worthwhile in the end i think.

Thanks chaps

[nuclearsquash]

Trooper,

currently we are using scrum, but there is talk of moving to XP methodology, so much so we (by we i mean our dev team, and testers)may be getting some in house training on this approach. Our team is an intergration of devs and the testers. it's great being able to shout at the devs when things go wrong and generally make their lives a misery. Saying that i work with a great bunch of people who really know their stuff. Much more so than the last place i worked.