The article covers the broad and main idea of what quality assurance is as well as lists some of the things that a software quality assurance engineer is most likely to be doing, however, the methods of work might...
I never thought that one day I will be studying software engineering nonetheless becoming a quality assurance engineer.
Everything changed the moment I knew that I won’t be able to pursue what I wanted. Software Engineering was the only gateway or available option I had at the moment; hence, I decided to give it a shot.
I started my journey without fully understanding what the course was about. However, as the studies advanced, I found out the areas I loved and those I did not really enjoy in the course.
Three years passed and I reached the point where I had to choose the path to take. At this point, my first stop was being a developer. As much as coding is said to be fun, I knew it was not what I want to pursue or continue doing for the next 5 years.
Early May 2021 was when I completed my internship, at this stage I only had 2 options. The first was to either further continue my studies or get a job to be able to stay in the country, and since I was not interested in studying, finding a job was my target.
I spent 2 complete months searching for a job. I applied to over 100 positions till I reached the point where I said “Faizah, you’re destined to continue studying”. On the exact day that I have set my mind to start looking into the majors I can take, that was when I got my first job as a Quality Assurance Engineer.
During my studies, all I knew about quality assurance was just that we had to ensure that the software developed met the minimum ISO standards and requirements, and testing was all about ensuring that our system is bug-free.
Being a quality assurance engineer opened my sight to another world related to software engineering which involves creating test cases, testing, asking questions, challenging assumptions, determining the risk of features being released, monitoring features after their release and many more.
As quality assurance engineers we are supposed to be involved from the very first project kick-off, this is all to ensure that we have the knowledge needed for us to determine the testing scenarios that we need to cover, come up with the edge testing scenarios that may be missed out as well as raising concerns related to the system as end users.
Software quality does not revolve only around testing, there’s another huge world that compliments or aids to support fastening our redundant work, known as automation testing which involves writing scripts and running them. This spectrum is not really exposed to students when studying so I was quite shocked when I found out that I can actually write codes to test. So, despite not wanting to be a developer I found myself being driven and attracted to explore the automation testing world. However, I cannot just jump to automation testing without at least mastering the minimum and basic skills required to be a tester.
There are many different testing approaches and methods to be used depending on the need and necessity of the project as well as the features being developed. Some projects need the focus to be mainly on end-to-end testing which involves ensuring that the software is functioning as requested and expected, while others need to focus mainly on by-screen testing which is about testing the UI of the system and ensuring that the screens are identical to what has been designed by the designer and that the user flow is not broken.
Another interesting area in testing is that we quality assurance engineers are still given the opportunity to review specs and ensure that developers include all the necessary specs required. So, yes, although we don’t write codes, we do review them.
There’s much more to testing than what is being shared with us outside there, thus, I spent 1 year and 4 months as a quality assurance engineer as an Intern and as of December 2022 I was given the opportunity and chance to start my fulltime career journey of being a quality assurance engineer focusing more on test automation to support my QA Team.
This is only a pinch of salt about what a quality assurance engineering and I am more than glad to be sharing this journey with you all in this blog series.
Stay tuned and wait for more 
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The post My Journey as a Tester: The beginning of everything (Chapter 1) appeared first on Synapse QA.
