My name is Moses Eniola. I’m a QA Software Tester(Manual Testing) with three years of experience in quality assuring different websites and applications manually. I’ve also helped in finding relevant content and visual bugs. Engaged in many test cases for cycles. I also took part in Usability Suggestions Tasks. I’m a year three student of the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, the University of Ibadan with three years of experience in translation, language annotations, sentence generation (both in English and Yoruba), etc.
Software testing is a vast territory consisting of multiple niches. Manual software testing is one of those niches; as the name implies, the testing is done manually, does not require coding skills, and has almost zero technical knowledge requirements. If you are considering venturing into manual software testing, then this article is for you.
What is Testing?
Testing is the process of scrutinizing a software/application to determine if it is functioning as it is designed to ensure that top-quality software is provided to users. It is checking software for bugs, and malfunctions in the software. It is also called QA (Quality Assurance) testing.
Manual Testing
Manual testing involves checking each functionality of a website or application manually to search for bugs, reporting any found bug so that it can be rectified by the developers.
Steps On How To Begin Software Testing
Open an account on a software testing site. Manual software testing does not require taking a degree or something, though it requires some I will talk about know-how in another article, how to identify bugs. Open an account on your desired software testing sites like test and tester work. Most sites will give you some materials to study and take a test before your account is fully accepted. Set up your profile when your account gets accepted and don’t forget to add all the devices you want to use for the tests.
Take The Study Materials Seriously
Most manual testing sites have a limit to the number of times you can take their test and you will be doing yourself a great disservice if you take the tests without going through the materials first. Some additional materials might also be provided after your account has been accepted, make sure you go through those as well as they will teach you the fundamentals of manual testing.
Read Instructions First
After setting up a profile, you will start receiving test invites. Always read the instructions before starting a test. The last thing you want is to receive a rejection for a bug you submitted based on it being out of scope.
Start With Reproductions
I always advise new testers to start their testing journey with reproductions. This will give you more practical examples of how to identify and submit bugs as you would see and be able to replicate bugs that have been submitted by other testers, see the reason for most rejections and how to avoid them.
Check The Payout
Some tasks have zero payment for execution and some, have extremely small amounts. You want to confirm if the test is worth the effort.
Lastly, I want to mention that manual software testing should not be taken as a full-time job but as a very rewarding side hustle. If you are interested in testing, you can consider going higher on the hierarchy by taking courses on QA engineering. These courses are available on Coursera, Udemy, and other online learning platforms.
