11 Books Each QA Engineer Should Read

December 16 14:39 2016 by Nataliia Vasylyna Print This Article

Dedicating your life to software testing, a person should realize that it is a rather complex science which includes a lot of aspects, information, and actions.

Whether you would like to be a manual tester or completely fond of automated testing, there is a certain level of knowledge every quality assurance engineer should possess. Moreover, learning software testing is a permanent process. IT sphere is growing and developing right now: new advanced systems and applications appear every day and a good tester should be very flexible and adaptive in such evolving environment.

From this perspective, QATestLab selected the most appropriate testing literature. Some books are fully theoretical while others contain the real project samples, useful tools, and techniques.

The Great Book Collection on Software Testing:

1. Software Testing Techniques (2nd Edition, Boris Beizner) – this should be a table-book for the person who decided to start his career path in testing. It contains almost all terms and core ideas of bugs detection. The book is written in common form and, hence, suits for any degree of training. Also, it describes how software testing company may implement certain testing strategies as for software development.
2. Testing Object-oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools (Robert V.Binder) – a very useful guide on how to design and automate test suites for object-oriented systems. This book includes 37 patterns of test design and 15 mini patterns of oracle strategies. Also, there is a big number of techniques which help to create test models. It can be of great use during regression testing and integration checking for OO code.
3. Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach (Cem Kaner) – a stellar choice for newcomers. This book helps to prevent and avoid the most common mistakes that a person make at the outset of his career. It explains how to organize the working process and do it more effective. In fact, there are real situations that may happen to each “green” tester on the book’s pages. These lessons are aimed to help organize, manage and control the projects.
4. How to Break Software: A Practical Guide to Testing (James Whittaker) – this book instructs the QA specialist to think wider and perceive testing not as a simple standard set of actions but be open-minded and dig to the roots. Of course, there is certain obligatory algorithm, however, this does not mean that, e.g., using an outdated specification is a great idea. At the very least, it is not smart and thief of time.
5. Software testing (Ron Patton) – this book incorporates testing types of all sorts: functional testing, usability checking, localization tests, security control, web application testing, and many others. It is a good guide for beginners to fast and easy figure out with most common software testing aspects.
6. The Art of Software Testing  (2nd Edition, Glenford Myers) – a very informative and detailed description of how to test successfully for both professional QA engineer or newcomer. It includes methodologies and guidelines of debugging, code inspections, and suggestions on writing good test cases.
7. Beautiful Testing: Leading Professional Reveal How They Improve Software (Theory in Practice) – testing is also an art. This is approved by 27 leading testers and developers who presented their ideas and experiences on more than 300 pages. It is very illustrative, explaining the necessity of implementing image comparison and mini-maps in test activity.
8. Software Testing: A Craftsman’s Approach (3rd Edition, Paul C. Jorgensen) –  the author wants to explain insight of test process via formula functions. The book consists of 2 part: a mathematical context and testing context. The first one tries to briefly present math theory in the context of testing and the rest of the book is focused on different types of checking: functional, structural, integration, system, and etc.
9. Testing Computer Software (2nd Edition, Cem Kaner) – another popular book of C. Kaner which learns testing computer software under the real-world condition. It implicates writing test plans, test cases, a small introduction to the errors, and also describes backgrounds of verification testing. It is a good choice for the new testers as it provides the full description of the black-box testing application.
10. Agile Testing: A Practice Guide for Testers and Agile Teams (1st Edition, Lisa Crispin) –  a very good practical work on testing under the conditions of agile software development methodology. An author collected the set of real examples from agile projects where determined the key roles of software testers in the development cycle. Also, there are 10 agile principles and a deep description of exploratory testing.
11. Implementing Automated Software Testing: How to Save Time and Lower Costs While Raising Quality (1st Edition, Elfriede Dustin) – describes the peculiarities of automation in test activity and shows its difference from other types of test processes. It includes everything:  tools, automated test lifecycle, reports, types of automation, requirements, and limitations.

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