It’s nice to see a list of recommended books but It would be even better to hear why people are recommending specific books and what value it brought to them in practice. As a relatively new tester, there is a wealth of information out there and I just don’t know what to focus on.
Good question! The answers may be as diverse as the list. People new to testing may benefit from books by other testers (e.g., authors such as Crispin, Kaner, Hendrickson, et al). People who have been in testing for a while may venture into books that focus on the experience of testing (e.g., authors such as Chabris/Simons, Weinberg, Kahneman, et al).
Perhaps you might choose one or two from this spectrum to determine what else you want to read; perhaps you may see yourself in at a certain point in your career and make a selection. Regardless of how you choose, I encourage you to take a reading journey!
For me, I found The Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off to be really useful in giving a mindset of how deep to test and how to define “enough”.
Evil by Design really helped me to advocate for users. E.g. is a customer likely to return to our site if they feel that they have been tricked into spending money or giving personal details? Probably not
Thanks @heather_reid the moderator, that’s two on my list I can initially look into and focus on. Looked on goodreads and The Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off is only 150 pages which is nice and short. I will definitely get back to you if I put any of that into practice. Defining ‘enough’ is definitely important to save time in testing.
I recommended the Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach (Bret Pettichord, Cem Kaner, James Bach) book for the reasons below:
It is written for folks who have been in software testing for a while, which is the case with me
There is little hand-holding, i.e. the book is low on fluff, it’s about as terse a book as you can read, but in a good way, i.e. it is all the more readable and powerful because of it
It is written by authors who are vastly experienced in software testing and it is literally the collected wisdom of their experiences
It has a wide spread of knowledge, not specific to any one aspect of software testing, so it’ll give me ideas on stuff that despite me being in software testing for a while I may not have come across so much, e.g. test strategy and growing the team
“Leading Quality: How Great Leaders Deliver High-Quality Software and Accelerate Growth”
by Ronald Cummings-John and Owais Peer
I feel like this is a book that everybody in the software industry should read at some point in their career
