Trade Me - Senior Software Test Analyst

Dec-2014 - Aug-2016

Trade Me

Trade Me is the iconic consumer auction website in NZ, one of the most popular websites accessed from NZ. Trade Me are renowned for their agile implementation, and have a well established test guild.

I was a Test Analyst with the Motors group, in a small cross functional agile squad, testing software changes to the iconic NZ Trade Me website focussing on the Motors page and features.

Squads owned the full technology stack to deliver new features and projects, from inception through to deployment in production. They were responsible for the story's design, implementation, testing, and deployment.

References

• 2016 Jason Cullum Reference. Jason was my chapter Lead for my duration at Trade me
• 2016 Jason Cullum Annual Review.
• 2016 Mike Berry Reference. Mike was the Trade Me Motors Delivery Manager

Responsibilities

• Context driven, tool assisted exploratory testing, using session and thread based techniques
• Testing DB, UI, API, and architectural changes
• Leading daily deployments to production
• Splunk system monitoring
• Agile Squad Mastering (Facilitating project inception, story grooming, planning & estimation, retrospectives, daily standups, sprintboard)
• Test automation for API (ReadyAPI/SoapUI) and UI changes (protractor) using BDD with Gherkin syntax.
• Test planning, peer test plan reviews, executing test sessions, defect workflow.
• Documentation of test practices.
• Metrics driven development - using A/B Testing.
• Active contributor to test and agile guilds.
• New staff induction and junior staff support.

Tools and Technologies

At Trade Me is used the following tools and technologies

• ReadyAPI for API testing & Automation using Groovy
• Jira for stories, test plans, session charters, bug tracking,
• mindmup, Xmind, SimpleMind for mind maps
• Confluence Wiki
• Mercurial for source control management
• Protractor for UI automation
• PowerShell scripts
• Icecream Screen Recorder for recording test sessions
• Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio for querying databases and profiling stored procedure calls
• Splunk for monitoring and live error analysis and error graphs
• Fiddler and Wireshark for network protocol analysis
• Chrome extensions (CJS Custom JavaScript, Bug Magnet, Clear Session, Responsive Web Ruler, WASP etc).
• Developer tools on tier 1 browsers

Agile

• Spotify model of squads, chapters and guilds.
• Small squads typically 2 Dev's, 1 Tester, ½ BA. The Product Owner (PO) gave direction but was considered outside the squad.
• Squads are trusted to ask for assistance when needed
• Squads perform regular retrospectives, are encouraged to use any mix of methodologies, and to continually look for new ways to improve their processes.

Testing

• Followed Context Driven Testing principles. Considering a wide scope for testing, looking for anything that might surprise someone that mattered.
• Shifted Left. Contributing early to discussions about UX, system architecture, and testability.
• Efficient, focussed on high risks, leaving acceptable risks.
• Used "Three Amigos" to share and understand the problem, the solution, and the testing.
• Peer reviewed test plans (session based exploratory test charters)
• Test early for early feedback. ie. before dev work was completed. Aiding alignment, informing what is left to complete story, avoids re-work.
• Dev walk through - UI and code - review test plan
• Demo to PO
• Testers deployed to production during twice daily release windows