Next up in our ‘Meet the Speaker’ Series for UKSTAR 2018 is Kinga Witko.
A girl in IT.
An experienced software tester.
Cat-lover. Fantasy books fan.
Kinga lives and works in Wrocław (Poland). She loves breaking mobile applications. Kinga is interested in user experience and its implementation in making great software. She is also fan of agile methodologies, curious about novelties in astronomy and new technologies.
Kinga will present as part of the storytelling sessions at UKSTAR 2018 in London. Kinga will present her story ‘Make IT Accessible’
1. What is your favourite testing book/blog? Why is this your favourite?
What can I say, I read a lot and it is a really hard decision for me to pick just one book or blog and say – oh, this is my favourite. I’m also a bit old-fashioned, because I read books made of paper- not their electronic versions, so I’ve chosen the book, that is handy and easy to take when you are commuting or travelling a lot.
My favourite testing book that inspired me in my mobile explorations is Daniel Knott’s ‘Hands-on Mobile App Testing: A Guide for Mobile Testers and Anyone Involved in The Mobile App Business‘. It is a great guide for all people who want to begin their adventure with mobile testing and don’t know how to start. This book is full of practical information and useful hints, it’s also precise and not too long.
2. How do you keep up to date with the software testing industry?
For me, the best way to be up to date with the industry is to follow testers from around the world on Twitter. It is a vibrant place for exchanging experiences and ideas – you can pick up some and learn more later on. It is also a great opportunity to meet fantastic testers and influences, chat with them and ask for help or feedback. It’s free and worldwide at the same time!
One of the Twitter’s biggest advantages is also an opportunity to ‘participate‘ in conferences or meetups, even if you are not in spot, by chasing tweets of other attendees. On the other hand, everyone is able to share their own experiences and main thoughts from speeches, meetups, tutorials for the benefit of the community. It’s good to be up to date.
3. What is the biggest misconception about testing that you’ve heard?
There are many, but my favorite is the description of exploratory testing in ISTQB Foundation Level Syllabus.
It says, that Exploratory testing is an approach that is most useful where there are few on inadequate specifications and severe time pressure, or in order to argument or compliment other, more formal testing.
At first, ISTQB syllabus teaches new testing adepts that exploratory testing is such insignificant approach to software testing, that mentioning about it in just five sentences in 78-pages long document is more than just enough. Secondly, it shows how old-fashioned the syllabus is. Exploratory is all I do at work and I found it the pure testing – the back-to basics thing, not just an appendix.