TL;DR

Being a passionate software tester means that you are a top-performing software tester in your team. As everybody thinks of themselves as top performers, this post will help you to do a reality check and see is this really true. The post is based on a remarkable book written by Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer.

To be recognized as a top software testing performer, two basic requirements must be satisfied:

• you must be identified by your superior as a top performer
• you must actually do the top-performing job

You can easily fall into the trap of daily mediocracy. Do your testing assignments as you have done them so far, and you will definitely not improve software testing work on the project. Think about how you can improve software testing.

For example, application deployment is not automated. Learn about Jenkins and put this on your idealist. The test team is doing a full regression manual test even for the small application changes? Ask yourself what the root cause of this problem is. Nobody knows which part of the application was touched in code with that change? Switch your codebase to Gitlab, Bitbucket, Github,… and start using git workflow for every codebase change. The test team missed critical bugs, learn about risk analysis, and start implementing it.

Every idea should go to paper. After you have a plan on how to implement that idea, communicate this via email to your superior. Always commit that you will fulfill that idea. This is the road to success. When you are done, shoot an email to your boss, so he knows this from you. In that way, your boss will have information on how your work contributes to project success.