A long-time freelancer in the tech industry, Josiah Renaudin is now a web content producer and writer for TechWell, StickyMinds, and Better Software magazine. Previously, he wrote for popular video game journalism websites like GameSpot, IGN, and Paste Magazine, where he published reviews, interviews, and long-form features. Josiah has been immersed in games since he was young, but more than anything, he enjoys covering the tech industry at large.
With new methodologies, technologies, and innovations constantly being introduced, testers need to continue to push forward with an open mind and an understanding of different disciplines to make sure they have a rock-solid standing in the process.
With DevOps, modern software teams of all shapes and sizes are aiming to deliver a high-quality software production early and often. Shifting testing earlier into your development lifecycle and smartly using test automation to reduce bottlenecks can create a more seamless, collaborative business.
One person might be the spark that starts the fire, but it takes multiple people to help keep the flame burning. Developers and testers rely on each other more and more these days, and you need to be able to pass something along to someone with different talents in order to successfully reach the finish line.
Security is continuing to skyrocket in importance as we tie more and more aspects of our personal life to the phones we carry. And with the Internet of Things burrowing deeper and deeper into our daily lives, we need to understand who has access to our info and how we can best protect ourselves.
Testing earlier assures better quality. But maybe most important, things like agile and DevOps—which encourage that you shift your testing left and allow for more collaboration between different parts of your team—have broken down the walls that previously separated testers for the rest of the organization.
Testing has often been seen as the final stage of creating an application. Since we weren’t shifting testing left as much as we do today, a great deal of work was thrown on the testing team at the very end of an exhausting project cycle. But testers shouldn’t be seen as the last line of defense.
Agile and DevOps, which now dominate software development, lean on continuous integration, continuous testing, and continuous deployment. Because of that, anything that might break this iterative and continuous cycle could throw everything out of whack and stunt your team’s growth.
