Arenāt all software testers always looking for useful and new tools? And donāt we all like to have a nosey about at what tools other testers are using?
Here is your chance to share and support the community!
CyPress for E2E automation, Lightshot for static screenshots, LICEcap for short videos, and Bug Magnet browser extension for edge case values. These are the ones that I use regularly, there are some more that I use as needed.
For task tracking we used Trello, but this year we switched to Notion.
I tend to use Excel for tracking things and data creation in the short term, Notepad++ for quick notes, actual notepads for doodling, Skype for conversations and screen-sharing with remote colleagues, Azure Devops for task and bug tracking, and whatever else is needed on a case-by-case basis.
I use TestFLO for manual test plan management which is integrated with Jira and makes it super easy to create follow up cases when necessary. I also use a bunch of Google Sheets to organize myself, and I use Sahi Pro for test automation, though it is advertised as a codeless option, but I had to learn a lot of code to be able to use it. Either way, it works for our purposes!
I also recently started playing with FullStory - because my parent company was using it and recommended it - which records user sessions that I can play back, but I havenāt found a great way to incorporate it into my flow yet. So far itās only integrated with our staging site so I can peek at testers behavior but I mostly forget itās there.
Outlook and Teams for communication JIRA for bug tracking QAF for test script writing and bug report creation (this is our own creation, works for Manual & Automated Tests, and has a neat dashboard and communicates with JIRA quite well) Test & Feedback Firefox & Chrome extension for most exploratory work or for reproducing bug steps to communicate to Developers Grammarly ('cause i forgot to uninstall it) Chrome extension and it doesnāt hurt to be clear when communicating - although itās not always correct. Clear Cache Chrome extension Counterstring Chrome extension for generating field-measurement strings Code Writer for analysing code and xml/html etc Textpad 8 for basic text manipulation (it has a lovely block feature so I can highlight columns) Filezilla for SFTP interactions Powerpoint for storing screenshots with basic notes that I can then edit and pass to the Trainers/Documentors IBM i Access Client Solutions for their AS400 emulator and for running SQL scripts to retrieve data directly from files
Kinda missing tools for documentation. I use dokuwiki and confluence to document and share knowledge about the product (and customer demands). But also for testing techniques used and lessons learned.
VSCode - for note taking and with some extensions, like, Rest Client to help API testing.
Postman - but after beeing using VS Code Rest Client extension Iām stoping using it. Itās more easy to share colection with the team using VS Code Rest Client
MobXterm - managing/organize my shells and VMs
MS SQL Server Management Studio
Robot 3T
Kafka Tools - for validation of produced and consumed Kafka messages
SourceTree - for a simple view of repo
InteliJ - IDE that iām using to implement Karate API tests
Software testing tools is a very broad concept that in practice is divided into some more subtle specifications. Let me clarify this in the list below thatās oriented towards PHP, Java and JavaScript:
Quick running tests
Unit tests (PHPUnit, JUnit, QUnit, ā¦)
Mutation tests (Infection, PiTest, Stryker, ā¦)
Behaviour tests (Behat, Cucumber, Jasmine, ā¦)
Security tests (Rips, SonarCube, Wapiti, ā¦)
Automated Dynamic testing
Selenium
Katalon Studio
Netflix Simian Army
SSLLabs
OH Dear App (Paid)
Manual Testing
TestBuddy
OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP)
Burp Proxy
Other tools
Snort for intrusion detection testing
SQLSlap for DB performance testing
JMeter, AB and Joe Siege for (web) app performance testing
Sentry for automated error reporting (not actual testing, but reporting)
Since Iām primarily working with PHP backend systems, I also have list of tools I specifically use to validate and improve applications written in PHP:
Exacat: analyzing, reporting and assessing PHP code source efficiently and systematically
GrumPHP: register some git hooks in your package repository
Phan: static analyzer for PHP
PHP_CodeSniffer: coding standards checker
PHP MD: PHP mess detection
PHP CPD: PHP copy/paste detection
PHP DCD: PHP dead code detection
PHP LOC: Analyses your code base and gives you a report of Lines of Code
Vimeo Psalm: static analysis tool for finding errors in PHP applications
Roave Security Advisories: prevents installation of packages with known vulnerabilities
Faker: generates fake data
Test reporting and tracking tools
Phabricator: open source Jira replacement on steroids
MantisBT: open source bug tracker
SonarCube: SaaS for running and displaying test results
Jenkins-CI: All in one CI/CD with limited reporting capabilities
I believe in the shift left approach where software testing should be really close to where itās being created, if possible before in TDD. But often we end up with automated tests to catch the low hanging fruit early and more in-depth issues later in a CI/CD build pipeline. I also believe in a unified team where development, testing and security share the same space as operations and network so knowledge is shared and problems are solved as a group.
As a consultant I can bring in these ideas to improve the applications and create a blameless, cohesive atmosphere within the teams. The goal is to speed up lead time, reduce errors and create a better user experience and I believe that these tools I mentioned here are certainly helping me achieving this goal.
Jira - I donāt see any project without this.
RobotFramework - I really liked to do automation with this tool.
Katalon - Is less powerful than Robot but to short and fast projects is a good option.
PL/SQL. I used it for a while and is very useful.
Notepad ++ - Is always useful.
Hiptest for capturing BDD scenarios. Exporting to a C# framework which drives our IoT system at various levels (ZigBee, mobile app, cloud and serial communications). CI done with Team City.
Cypress / Nightwatch for automated GUI tests BackstopJS for visual regression IntelliJ as my IDE for the two mentioned above Skitch for taking screenshots - good for easily adding text, arrows, frames etc Jira for story, tech task and defect management Postman / Insomnia for API testing DbVisualizer for querying our databases k6.io for performance testing Kibana for viewing logs
I use JIRA for bug tracking, and SnagIt for screenshots and video. I also draw mind maps (mostly freehand but sometimes using Xmind) for exploratory testing tracking and coming up with new test ideas, and I find Excel useful for noting down more detailed test scenarios.
