I did some retrospection myself on what way writing helped me to improve myself as a software tester. I have realized that it has improved my writing skills and thinking skills. So, I am sharing my experience writing articles/blogs and why testers need to start writing them.
Gathering ideas
To write articles or blogs, I need to come up with ideas. For that, I need to read a lot of books and blogs. Also need to talk with different people and explore the outside world. Like that, only I ended up writing an article on “Even Programming languages have bugs”. I got this idea during my Rapid Software testing Explored class, where Michael Bolton explained some JavaScript language bugs. The same I did for my testing work, like getting ideas from testing books and blogs and talking with fellow testers, software developers and product owners.
Improvise thinking
When writing articles, I deeply think about the arrangement of the subtopics in a way that it’s readable for readers. In order to engage the readers, I also think about the positioning of the subtopics along with the article’s overall tone.
In my testing work also, I think about requirements or user stories from the end-user perspective and figure out appropriate test design techniques to get proper testing coverage. As well as when sending emails and writing bug reports, I consider the tone of the message that I need to convey before sending it to Software developers and product owners.
Getting feedback
Once I have written an article or blog, I will post it on social media and ask for feedback. If I receive any feedback or comments, I will address that by correcting or including them in my blog. I have also learned some new things through the feedback I have received.
I applied the same in my testing work, like sharing my test and bug reports to developers, co-testers and product owners and getting their feedback.
Practice testing
From all these experiences, I concluded that writing blogs could also be an excellent way to practice testing. When verifying my blog, I understood the importance of self-verification during code development. It also motivated me to start writing my own code and verifying it.
Using tools like Grammarly for spell check and Grammatical errors, I realized how automation could be used to check simple functionality and repetitive scenarios. Also, when analyzing the impact of my article, I understood the importance of writing impactful bug reports.
Overall I felt that writing articles and blogs improved my thought process and thinking like a software tester. So if you start writing articles and blogs, it will shape your thought process as a tester.
Here is the summarized version of the message that I would like to convey in writing blogs and articles.
So now, I am curious to know what makes YOU feel that testers need to start writing blogs. Let me know in the comments 🙂
