Moving from testing to development
One of my coworkers asked me for advice on shifting from a testing role to development. Inside IBM, cross-role experience can often be picked up within a project, on a BizTech opportunity, or by assignment to another role (if the project manager really, really believes in you). Here are some tips if you’re considering the shift yourself:
Although you can build your skill in steady increments, building expertise can be a long and frustrating process. You’ll make a lot of progress in the beginning, but you’ll probably hit a plateau. Don’t be frustrated.
Unless your project manager is okay with taking a risk on you, you probably won’t be able to immediately spend time developing those skills on the job. Here’s how you can free up some time to work on improving your skills:
- Look for ways you can work more efficiently and effectively, so that you can save time.
- Document those processes so that you understand them better and so that other people can take over your role when you leave.
- Automate as much as you can, saving more time and enabling more people to do your work.
You want to be replaceable. You can’t spend time learning something else or move on to another project if that would leave a big gap in your previous team.
How can you learn more about development when you’re testing?
- You can improve your processes, learning more about available tools along the way.
- You can learn how to script while automating tasks.
- You can learn an in-demand skill and get pulled into projects that way.
- You can focus on providing additional value while testing. For example, if your project is okay with it, do whitebox testing in addition to blackbox testing. By reading the source code, you might be able to think of test cases that should be covered. You can try helping with problem identification, using tests to narrow down where the bug might be. Once you get good at that, you can try documenting your problem-identification process and commonly-encountered bugs. When you’ve got a good feel for the structure of the program and how things are generally fixed, you might even tentatively propose fixes.
What other advice would you give to people who want to move from testing to development?
Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/7023
What you’re saying is that this person should try to collect programming experience while doing his testing job. If he/she has got some spare free time, he/she could also consider contributing to an open source project.
Absolutely. Open source is awesome. As the person in question works at IBM, she’ll need to get approval to contribute to open source, which makes it a bit more of a hassle, but open source is totally awesome.
Hi “Sacha:,
I completely agree with you that open-source is awesome, I am myself a big enthusiast of it.
I need your advice, I am a fresher and accidentally entered a CRM testing job (I was supposed to be in dev team but they required testers so put me into testing. They also told me that I can switch to development in coming time), so will starting my career as a tester will affect my future options to switch to development, should I quit existing job anf search for a new development job or I should carry on with the current job and keep on polishing my skills to get a development job in my company itself????
Ankit: If I were in your situation, I’d stay in the job.You don’t want to switch jobs too quickly, because then future employers get nervous. Besides, it’s good to have many skills and to be flexible. I’d keep a close eye on the development team, and work on ways to find out when a position becomes available and how to become the best-qualified person for that position. You might be able to do this by regularly talking to the manager of the development team. I would focus on doing really well at the testing job. Learn how to use automated testing tools, and work on identifying ways you can even improve the testing/build process. Lastly, I might set aside some personal time to work on development-related projects, so that when a position becomes available (either there or at a different company), I’d have the experience to make me a stronger candidate.
Hope that helps!
what growth does testing have in the industry respect to personal knowledge,skills and salary…???????
Growth depends on how much you invest into it. There’s always more to learn.
Hi, I am 2 years experience in Manual Testing in very big MNC, but i am not satisfied with Manual Testing as I am now a days feeling that I have learnt nothing in this field as compared to my dev. colleagues. When I entered in Testing I was a fresher and as my company is very big, It is not much flexible to allow people to switch from QA to dev. And, in my last 2 project I didn’t get time to harness my skill as dev. because of work pressure and also it don’t seem to me that there is any chances of automation project coming up in my account.
I think taht i have development skill its just this that I never got any chance or oppurtunities as my colleagues.
I am loosing my sleep over this. Please help me out.
You can learn how to automate your testing, or learn development during your personal time. For example, if you test web applications, you might check out Selenium. Good luck!