This site is being developed constantly, so as to bring a better experience to its visitors! Ultimately, I will be providing basic training courses that today’s Test Analysts should have.
You may see Job Specifications out there asking for just about every Test Analyst skill known to man, however, I will be providing just the right skills that I know you will need to succeed as a professional, skills such as: basic manual testing skills, how to think like a Test Analyst, producing automation applications (Selenium WebDriver), writing SQL, API testing and improving your interview techniques…for starters.
The site also provides a web application (HomeFinance) that you can download and test against, be it testing manually or perhaps running your first automation tests against, perhaps using something like Selenium WebDriver.
The training courses will be introduced in a phased manner. To ensure that you receive notification of when they are available, please subscribe today 🙂 !
About me…
I came into the IT industry as a Developer 30 years ago, progressing to become a Systems Analyst (which they now call a Software Architect), selling my skills as an IT Contractor to companies with multi £billion revenues, where I designed and helped code multi £million systems. In between these roles, I was tasked with system testing applications I’d designed and coded…this being a time before Test Teams existed.
With the emergence of Test Teams, the days of System Analysts testing their own designs were fading. It wasn’t, however, until 2010 that I decided that I was going to focus on the test arena, to make it my passion. Why testing? Simply because I love the work. It is the end product of requirements capturing, designing and development, deciding whether a system actually works and whether or not it can go live!
The skills of a Test Analyst are wide and varied, combining not only the understanding of complex systems, requirements, technical aspects such as design and development, but also actually being technical enough to do my own design, write my own code and test at all levels, be it unit, functional, system, automation or even performance test. Yes…it is a very skilled and highly regarded part of the project life cycle.
However, the greatest pleasure I have gotten over the past 11 years, is teaching people, people either new to the industry or Test Analysts who have a desire to become more technical!
My mission…
I have enjoyed every minute in the IT industry, the thrill of finding solutions to complex problems, the immense satisfaction of getting applications to work, to testing multi £million systems. Now, I am looking to combine the two things I love, testing systems and teaching people, so as to train as many people as I can to become professional Test Analysts, in the easiest way possible, learning the right skills to get better jobs and ultimately…TO EARN VERY GOOD MONEY!
Keep it simple
In a world of ever changing technology, companies are chasing the “best and most efficient” ways of making changes to their websites and indeed systems that keep their business running.
The problem is, what they perceive to be the best ways can at times, I believe, confuse or complicate things. For me, systems haven’t changed that much over the past couple of decades. Yes, the front end of their systems have changed immensely from an end user point of view, but the concept of development and in particular testing has changed very little. When testing, the same tools and techniques to test GUI front ends, business logic and database systems can still be used that were being used when I first came into the industry over 20 years ago.
My advice to somebody starting out in the testing arena is…KEEP IT SIMPLE!