What tools would you recommend to someone new to testing? – 30 Days of Tools, Day 28

📆 30 Days of Testing
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Welcome to Day 28 of the 30 Days of Tools challenge. Time to recommend the essential tools – the tools you just need to use when you first begin your journey into a career in testing.

What tools would you recommend to someone new to testing?

  • These are the essentials, the tools that will put someone on a good track as they grow into their testing career
  • “Pen and Paper” and “My Brain” are noted so how about something on top of those?
  • Why do you recommend these tools? How do they help, and in what context?

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It totally depends on the context of the project.
I would advise to use a tool to

  • Intercept & modify requests: burpsuite or fiddler (any tool will do)
  • do some exploratory tests with API’s: for example: Postman
  • JMeter is an easy to use tool for performance testing (easy to start with)
  • Developer Tools (The F12 in the browser :-D)
  • Any mindmap tool or tool to make schema’s. Starting out in testing and mapping the application is a big help. It will create a nice overview of what is possible.
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If they’re going to be working in a more of a traditional organisation, then they should get familiar with test management tools (like Testrail, Zephyr, Xray, etc.) and also ALM tools like Jira or Azure DevOps. For people working with a more modern approach to test, I’d recommend looking for tool which can help make you with exploratory testing.

Communication tools like Slack, Teams, Skype - since lot of us a working remote for probably an extended time period it’s important to get comfortable wit using such tools and utilizing them in testing as much as possible, for instance Slack has nice Jira integrations which send messages to people once a new bug has been reported and similar.

They help you to stay in the loop and assist in team collaboration. For example, the InteliJ IDE has a really neat pair programming feature which is even available in the free community edition!

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According to me, an important tool for beginners is the bug registration system.

  • how do I report bugs?
  • can I really understand the problem of the user?
  • how did I test the solution of the ticket?
  • is it clear to the programmers, why I report other relevant observations?
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My essentials in a strictly manual sense are as follows:

  • a good note taking app, whatever works best for you
  • a timer app like Pomodoro, it will keep you sane if you work at home
  • Insomnia as a REST client for API testing
  • Charles proxy, for mobile testing when you need to know what is going on in the API
  • mobile device simulators if you can’t afford extra phones
  • Slack/Discord, because even if your work doesn’t use it, you need it for tool communities
  • a good bookmarking strategy, be it in browser, app, or in notes
  • a good list of books to read: Atomic Habits, Clean Code, Agile testing, etc
  • a good head on your shoulders to make good decisions with a keen eye
  • your own natural curiosity about the world
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I think the tools would depend and differ based on what you’re working on. For a project like Ribbon, use Zephyr Tool for writing test cases. Selenium for automation.
If you want API Testing - Postman is the way to go.
JIRA is a must for Test case management Tool.
Selenium IDE is good for beginners because it has a recording feature. You just need to perform a test case/scenario on a browser like you are testing it manually and selenium IDE locates the elements for you as well as the steps that you have performed like clicking, entering text in the field, etc. So I’d say that’s a win.

For performance/speed testing of web pages to a new one you can use the online available tools like GTmetrix, PageSpeedInsights, Lighthouse chrome extension.
Jmeter can also be used for Performance testing.

Hope this helps!

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Are these any good? I never heard of them, might give it a try! What’s your experience with them?
Any pro’s / cons?

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Here’s what I think or encountered.
GTmetrix:
Mostly it’s a good experience, especially given the free options to analyze results. I haven’t seen the need yet to pay for the upgraded experience. It helps me in one click and a few seconds of loading time which gives me more information about what needs fixing in the website.
Pros:

  • It helps us identify areas that can be improved in the web pages.
  • It Gives a score from each separate tool, also displays loading time, page size, and total requests very easily.
    Cons:
  • The UI is a little confusing.
  • Sometimes we need to wait a little longer to get the results, other than that this is a good tool to measure the speed of our website.
    PageSpeedInsights:
    It helps me to optimize my website according to the speed it takes to load and what kind of content consumes more time to load. It provides insights on how to improve user experience, accessibility, and performance.
    Pros:
  • It separate results for mobile site and desktop site.
  • Identifies opportunities for web page performance improvements.
    Cons:
  • Unable to test stats from different locations around the world.
  • Slightly gives different results when re-analyzing the same URL several times.
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A networked attached share to store screenshots on.

Start small, gradually and organically start to organize yourself. The process of taking a screenshot and stowing it whenever you spot something unusual/notable is a starting point into all kinds of tools, and of process automation, but mostly into organizing how you test and of your observation skills. Don’t get distracted by the specific tool, like any real carpenter, you will hold many in your lifetime.

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Hi,

I’m Silvio, a passionate tester for over 26 years and founder of the ‘early Model Based Testing’ (eMBT) approach and the supported eMBT tool TestCompass.

I will highly recommend an eMBT tool like TestCompass. Another example is CIQD (Adpart).

TestCompass for e.g. is an eMBT tool which stimulates communication and collaboration between business and IT in an very early stage of the SDLC. The goal of Testcompass is early feedback by perform static testing. TestCompass can automatically generate the testcases from an easy to set up and readable test model with predefined test coverage forms from weak to stong. Also an impact analysis after changing the test model is performed automatically. Https://www.compass-testservices.com

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