Learning Software Quality Assurance as a beginner, how did it all started?
One day while I was wandering around the wide diverse world of technology and googling common questions which any computer science undergraduate would have such as “What is the highest paying role in the tech industry”, “What are the most popular job positions in the tech industry”,” Will Elon Musk replace all the software engineers with AI robots in the next 20 years?”. I came across the term Quality Assurance Engineer me being the curious person I am started digging down the internet to find out what it really means and how this vast industry of software quality assurance started in the very first place?
THE EARLY 90s
Quality Assurance has not been a real priority in the tech industry in the early 50s and 60s, as a matter of fact, Quality Assurance has been first popularized by Jerry Weinberg the leading operating systems development manager in NASA as he put together a professional testing group to handle tests in project mercury where Americans sent the first satellite to space in 1958.
According to Jerry Weinberg “Up to that time, programmers were expected to write programs that didn't have flaws in them” reading this quote from Mr. Jerry I do feel bad about myself considering the number of times I visit StackOverflow when something goes wrong.
Anyway, Jerry Weinbergs’ professional testing crew, set the standard for the computer programming and testing industry, according to Mr.Jerry “this gave birth to lots of managers hiring people who they didn't feel were qualified to be programmers but they could hire them as testers.”
FAST FORWARD TO 2001
In a famous article “No silver bullets” IMB System 360 architect Fred Brooks lamented that software development had nowhere to grow. But soon this was proved wrong as in 2001 as 17 software development leaders get together and created the manifesto for Agile Software Development. Claiming to uncover better ways of developing software replacing the traditional software development method known as Waterfall.
This caused the Quality Assurance industry to skyrocket as the role of software testers now became a role of major importance and responsibility as they became required members of the engineering team allowing them to maintain the product quality from the very start doing bug fixes at the time of coding also causing automation tests to be widespread.
BACK TO THE MODERN-DAY
Today the QA industry has grown and developed exponentially opening the door for many opportunities for the next generation. In a nutshell today there are a lot of types of tests done to assure the quality of the software,
Functional testing, Usability testing, System testing, Unit tests, Integration testing are the most popular, and Ad hoc testing a quite formal test method that is done without planning and documentation (something like a fire drill in an office of course this test method is carried out by a human ). According to a 2019 report by Markets And Markets, stated that Automation testing itself will worth $28.8 Billion by 2024 which is an 18% growth compared from 2019 to 2024 which paints a clear picture in our mind that the QA industry is going nowhere but up for decades to come.
In conclusion after spending hours of watching content on youtube and reading blogs related to the growth and humble beggings of the QA industry, the key takeaway in my personal opinion is that when testing progress matters and not perfection.
Sources — https://testingpodcast.com/tag/jerry-weinberg/
Sources — https://agilemanifesto.org/
Sources — http://worrydream.com/refs/Brooks-NoSilverBullet.pdf
