My Journey at a Client Site: Variety is the Spice of Life

I knew this opportunity would bring huge change for me

From day one at the client’s office I was acutely aware of how challenging the journey would be. When I joined, some of the tools and technologies were new for me, which was a challenge to set up initially. The work I was assigned with also required conversations with different people to collect requirements, which came with its own set of challenges being new to site.

I joined as an Automation Test Analyst in the Rainforest Squad. Rainforest is a crowd sourcing test tool used by organisations and individuals to execute tests from testers around the world. I initially started my role as the Rainforest Team Lead and my responsibilities included gathering requirements, conducting stand ups, identifying blockers and providing daily status reports.

My hard work and performance led me to a new endeavor of being an independent tester for a team that manages financials, time sheets for resources and purchase orders.

As time passed, many lessons were learned

Working as an independent open source automation tester laid the foundations for my technical advancements as it helped me get acquainted with new tools. Testing in Agile ways of working was something I was not used to and was at times challenging. Over time I realized that being an automation tester alone was not enough. Instead, I had to wear many hats, which allowed me to learn and grow and I’ve been given ample opportunities to refine my skills by representing in front of the business users and stakeholders. Each day was mind boggling, but yet that somehow was my drive and motivation to do better each and every day.

It wasn’t a cake walk…

Challenges and failures help in carving out the hidden gems within a person. A shift from being a team member to leading a squad brought in new responsibilities of binding a team together where I was answerable to all the questions. Being part of a techie world has its own clichéd milestones and one must keep oneself updated with all the various new systems and platforms.

For me, the major change was to switch from Waterfall to Agile, but it was a good change as Agile makes a tester feel that you are not less important and makes you get involved in every activity. It keeps you busy at all times. Another challenge for me was switching from Tosca to Selenium (built in features to open source). Both were new tools for me; one that has all the required built-in features and one being open source.

Testing is my passion, so to apply my testing skills while working on my communication skills and building relationships was indeed a great experience. I worked closely with different product lines, which added variety to my work and helped me increase my domain knowledge in a wholesome manner. This experience improved my skillset and gave me evidence aplenty to support my claims of being a good team player, great communicator and a strong leader. I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.