QA and creative people — is it possible to combine?
The growing popularity of IT attracts different people here. Some of them start their journey in this area with QA. If you have a technical education or related work experience, the question of the correct choice is much less acute. But if a creative person decided to become a tester, there are quite a lot of doubts. Today I will try to dispel them.
Let’s understand the terms and concepts
Quality Assurance (QA) is a broad concept that refers to activities at all stages of the software life cycle that are used to ensure the required level of quality of the released product.
Quality Control (QC) is the work on a product during development in order to obtain information about its current state. In other words, the QC specialist determines how ready the product is and whether it meets the quality requirements in any given period of time.
Software Testing is a quality control technique that involves planning test activities, designing tests, executing those tests, and analyzing the resulting data.
It is the position of a software tester that is called one of the easiest ways to start in IT.
How and where do software testers work?
Among these specialists, there are those who specialize in:
Manual testing — Test applications manually by simulating user actions. The specialist makes sure that the program works as it should in different scenarios of interaction.
Automated testing — they do everything the same, but with the help of programs.
One of the testing methods is the “black box strategy”, when an object is tested without using knowledge about its internal structure.
When planning behavioral tests, the specialist takes into account the technical requirements for the software. For example, the specification states that after a new user registers, the application sends a confirmation email to the specified email address. The tester registers in the application and checks if the corresponding letter has arrived.
Manual testing is considered the easiest way to assess the quality of an application. At the same time, it is considered a relatively expensive operation, since the speed and accuracy of checks is limited by the capabilities of testers.
Automated testing requires more skills and abilities from a specialist than a manual tester has.
Testers are needed in teams that develop software for various areas. More often, such departments are found in medium and large companies, where the product is made for themselves or provides outsourced IT services.
Where is the place for creativity?
It all depends on what project you get into. If it’s complex with interesting tasks and good management, then there will immediately be a lot of room for creativity. Here it will be necessary to put yourself in the shoes of customers and imagine all their strange and non-standard actions that are not yet provided for in the system. And you also need to look for where the developers messed up, and gradually delving into the code, find amazing bugs.
Also, working in software testing makes it possible to understand how everything works from the inside: how they write code, automate and develop new products. There are a lot of options to develop and grow further here, even for creative individuals. It’s important to like it. But how do you decide to move from creativity to QA? What if it’s not mine? The only way to understand is to try. Here it is important to choose the right training program and those who will teach. After completing the courses, carefully select a place of work so that it matches the creative manifestations of your personality.
In fact, practice shows that people with different skills and without technical knowledge become testers. People come to this profession when they want to change their lives, try something new and at the same time, for example, work from home and not even full time. It is likely that you will not have to give up classical creativity.
