what have i been doing?
I took a pause on the Test or Flop series, however that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped testing or flopping.
I took Kristin Jackvony’s Postman Essential Training course. The funny thing is that at some point in the past I had actually started it and never completed it (We’ve all been there). But I felt so inspired to level up and to think about testing differently that I actually finished it this time.
With UTest, the bulk of the work I’ve done leans on the functional side of applications/websites. While that offers good practice, I do recognize that just because something “works”, doesn’t mean it’s as responsive as it could be. Also, only focusing on function and crashes misses a lot of other fun opportunites to break things.
After finally finishing the course, I feel like I have a good general understanding of how Postman works. I also plan on taking it again and seeing how far I can get by running my own tests, checks, and calls without direction. This led me into buying her book The Complete Software Tester because she explains things so clearly. I’ve jumped around a lot in the book, but I’m blown about by all of things I’ve taken for granted in my own attempts at testing. How does the application handle spaces in text fields? In file names? How are back buttons redirecting the user? What happens when the user logs out and presses the back button? These are things that I’ve taken for granted as a user. Now I tend to spend more time on the things I considered small because if they worked once, I assumed they worked for everything.
Recently I was testing a website that offered a promotion for a subscription after a free trial. On the landing page you were offered one price, however if you signed into the site, went to your account settings, and viewed the membership plans offered, you could get the same subscription for half of the price advertised initially. Not a bug per se, but imagine all of the calls/emails/refunds you can avoid just by having consistent information on your website. As I read more, I challenge myself to look for things my previous self would overlook.