Education and Training of Highly-skills Software Test Engineers

Education and Training of Highly-skills Software Test Engineers (insights from 20+ years of experience)

By:
Vahid Garousi, PhD, PEng
Queen’s University Belfast, UK
Bahar Software Engineering Consulting Corporation, UK
www.vgarousi.com

Event:
BCS Software Testing specialist group (SIGIST)
https://www.bcs.org/events/2020/november/webinar-testing-apprentice/

Date:
November 3, 2020

Transcript

1. 1 Dr. Vahid Garousi Education and Training of Highly-skills Software Test Engineers (insights from 20+ years of experience) Vahid Garousi, PhD, PEng Queen’s University Belfast, UK Bahar Software Engineering Consulting Corporation, UK v.garousi@qub.ac.uk www.vgarousi.com @vgarousi A presentation for: November 3, 2020 Duration: 20 minutes
2. 2 Dr. Vahid Garousi Outline  Who am I?  State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  How do we provide the most effective education and training?  More resources
3. 3 Dr. Vahid Garousi Who am I? Education: PhD in Software Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 2006 MSc in Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada, 2003 BSc in Software Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, 2000 Work experience: Academia (Associate Professor), since 2006 in four countries Managing Consultant, Bahar Software Engineering Consulting, since 2001- Software Engineer, Offshore office of Corsha Software Inc., Quebec, Canada, 1998-2001
4. 4 Dr. Vahid Garousi 15+ years of experience in providing software-testing education and training  … since 2005 in both academia and industry, internationally  By a rough estimate, I have trained more than 1,000+ students in university settings, and more than 200+ employed software testers (test engineers) in industry Remote online education and training during COVID, Summer 2020 (seen above: Teaching model-based testing)
5. 5 Dr. Vahid Garousi My own experience in software testing  I first conducted “systematic” manual testing (using documented test scenarios-in Word) in 1998  Developed my first automated test suite in 1999, using the tool: IBM Rational Functional Tester  It was (is) a record-playback tool Corsha Software Inc., 1999
6. 6 Dr. Vahid Garousi Outline  Who am I?  State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  How do we provide the most effective education and training?  More resources
7. 7 Dr. Vahid Garousi State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  There is a HUGE demand, and market for software testing training:
8. 8 Dr. Vahid Garousi State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  People who become software testers have either learned about software testing in their university and/or via training in industry, self- learning, etc.  And of course, in our field, everyone has to constantly learn new things (to keep it), so the picture is very dynamic May or may not include testing in curriculum Employed as Industrial training / certificates in software testing Non-SE/CS/IT graduates Higher education (universities): Non-SE/CS/IT degrees Produce Produce Software engineering professionals Self-learning (self-training) in software testing Graduates Sometimes get Sometimes get May change jobs SE/CS/IT graduates: with varying degrees of software testing skill-set Higher education (universities): SE/CS/IT degrees Sometimes get Software engineering activities in practice Engaged in Such as software Development, testing and requirements engineering To do a better job in software testing, and/or to find better positions Self-taught software engineers Without university education, Apprenticeship, ...
9. 9 Dr. Vahid Garousi Outline  Who am I?  State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  How do we provide the most effective education and training?  More resources
10. 10 Dr. Vahid Garousi How do we provide the most effective education and training in testing?  Providing the right training for each trainee based on her/his background and skill-set. Whether the trainee is in:  Apprenticeship  University program (SE/CS/IT …)  Already in an IT role/position and needs skill “upgrade” speakerdeck.com/vgarousi/choosing-the-right-testing-tools-and-systems-under-test-suts-for-practical-exercises-in-testing-education
11. 11 Dr. Vahid Garousi How do we provide the most effective education and training in testing?  To learn and conduct proper testing, a trainee needs the “right mix” of:  Fundamentals of testing, concepts such as black-box test techniques  How to choose the “right” tool(s) for a given problem, and “How to apply” the tools (often under-estimated). Only taking the tool X from the shelf and using it without a proper skill-set and test strategy, could result in poor outcomes or project failure o (books could be written about this!)
12. 12 Dr. Vahid Garousi What I have been doing to provide the most effective education and training in testing  One ongoing activity: Designing and offering (since 2008) a set of free/open hands-on exercises for Software Testing (Laboratory Courseware)  Lab 1-Manual testing and using bug tracking systems  Lab 2-Blackbox testing with JUnit  Lab 3-Whitebox testing and code coverage  Lab 4-Mutation testing  Lab 5-GUI testing (web application testing) with Selenium  Lab 6-Static code analysis using FindBugs tool  … and at least 5 more topics sites.google.com/view/software-testing-labs
13. 13 Dr. Vahid Garousi Free/open hands-on exercises for Software Testing  sites.google.com/view/software-testing-labs According to many feedbacks that we have received from software-testing educators and students, they find these labs useful and effective for learning. Since its inception in 2008, the courseware has been used by over 55 instructors (trainers) in their software-testing courses in more than 17 countries worldwide so far. Feel free to review and use them.
14. 14 Dr. Vahid Garousi A quick review: Lab 1-Introduction to Testing and Defect Tracking  Goals:  Getting hands-on experience in ad-hoc, manual and regression testing  Using industrial defect tracking practices and tools (Bugzilla)  Experiencing that ad-hoc testing is not always very effective  SUT: An ATM simulation system  Testing support tool: Bugzilla  Realistic defects were manually injected in the SUT
15. 15 Dr. Vahid Garousi A quick review: Lab 1-Introduction to Testing and Defect Tracking  Lab document (instructions)…  Extensive effort was spent to prepare clear, concise and “interesting” lab exercises…  Involving several good students of mine helped a lot in this aspect  Also, these training documents have been used since 2008 in my training in both university education and training in industry  Thus, have been “tuned” for many years
16. 16 Dr. Vahid Garousi Outline  Who am I?  State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  How do we provide the most effective education and training?  More resources
17. 17 Dr. Vahid Garousi More resources  So many people have written about their “experience” and “best practices” for software-testing education and training  The survey paper below provides a summary of 204 papers, in this area, published between 1992 and 2019.  PDF: www.bit.ly/SoftwareTestingEducationSurveyPaper Summarize Summarize
18. 18 Dr. Vahid Garousi Outline  Who am I?  State of software-testing education (universities) and training (industry)  How do we provide the most effective education and training?  More resources Questions / Answers