Software testing internship in group 2023.4: team retrospective notes

What helped the team to move forward?
- Useful and interesting project
- Work with AI language models
- Easy to start
- Excellent communication within team
- Strong connection with stakeholders
- Access to try something new

What held the team back?
- Lack of requirements
- Lack of access to Database
- Tasks are not well described
- Hard to see the whole picture

How could the team do things differently?
- Be more active in Slack
- Be more proactive to choose tasks
- Ask more questions to stakeholders
- To make a testing process more complete

What should the team do next?
- Manage task within team
- More communication
- Reviewing each other’s work
- Make an attempt to complete requirements for the application

#QA #QualityAssurance #SoftwareTesting

Another successful 2-month software testing internship recently finished.

The students became a part of a Canadian company "SellMeThisPen" and were fully involved in all work processes. 7 interns and 1 lead-mentor worked together along with the team and were lucky to gain valuable experience. Altogether, the scope was 1120 person-hours.

The goal was to create and implement a test infrastructure and methodology in conditions of lack of test documentation, requirements, and any test management system, with a minimum time and cost. However, the quality assurance team ensured 95% test coverage of the application. A test management system was implemented, and a requirements draft was written, based on which the new team will be able to work smoothly. But as a result, during the internship, our team made significant progress in software quality assurance. Read the report to find out more.

#QA #QualityAssurance #SoftwareTesting

The main indicator of great QA training and a full internship on a real business project?

Of course, getting an offer on this very project.
Alas, the companies that accept internships are usually small and cannot accept everyone. But almost every company where we have organized two-month internships over the past year has decided to hire one of the interns. Or, feeling the usefulness of testing, they formed a QA department from scratch.

Airline ticket offices (0 hire)
DevEx (1 hire)
Topsweteam (1 hire)
Base86 (2 hire)
Curbi (0 hire)
Oknasoft (3 hire)
SellMeThisPen (1 hire)

#QA #QualityAssurance #SoftwareTesting

Not so long ago, another successful 2-month software testing internship in group 2023.4 came to an end.

This time, the students were lucky enough to become part of a Canadian company "SellMeThisPen". There was 1 lead mentor and 7 interns. Altogether, the scope was 1120 person-hours.

In the image, you can see a quote from one of the interns. The other interns also noted that it was really useful and interesting project, with excellent team communication, strong connection with stakeholders and there was an ability to work with AI language modules. Of course, there were also challenges which let the interns experience real work conditions and find the decisions.

All in all, both interns and CEO of the company, Michael Ocean, remained very satisfied.

#QA #QualityAssurance #SoftwareTesting

The goal is 90% of students reach the end of the course.

The biggest disappointment of any QA student is leaving the course. Whether this is due to failure to keep up or due to frustration.

- There are simple courses where everyone makes it to the end of the course because "no one bothers" and the homework can be done for a tick or not done at all.
- There are frustrating courses where they promise one thing at the entrance but deliver another. Students are disappointed and leave.
- There are more difficult courses, but where the commercial director rules the enrollment, and therefore the advertising says "QA is easy". Not everyone succeeds and some students drop out (but the school manages to make money).

We, as implementers of professional QA training, set ourselves a completely unrealistic goal - intense and complex training, but with a minimum of 90% students reaching the end of the course.

In 2022, we were sometimes very far from meeting it. For example, in the group 2022.4, only 5 out of 11 initially enrolled students reached the end of the course - i.e. 55% of students dropped out.

There were many justifying points: a) it is still better than the market average 60-70% dropout rate b) last year's changes led to many students moving away or changing financial priorities.

But for professionals, there should be no excuses. We continued to work on making the course easier to digest without reducing its complexity. We paid even more attention to student-mentor communication - the mentor now gives each student feedback 150 times during the course in the form of grades, comments, and feedback. We introduced vocational guidance and entrance testing.

As a result, in the group 2023.2, the outcome is actually achieved. An intense training leading to effective employment and an impressive QA career was successfully completed by the end by 88% of the original enrollees!

We continue to work both to consolidate this and to reach an even more ambitious goal of 90% of the graduates being employed.

#QA #QualityAssurance #SoftwareTesting