The following article was written by Herdics Lidar for "IT History", issue 70, July 2030. How the text made the time travel here is untraceable. Reports that Agrajag had something to do with it have not yet been confirmed. Feel free to send letters to the editor to me, I will keep them for Herdics.
I can still remember when the advent of so-called mobile apps and devices heralded the end of the classic PC in its former form. What is now really retro was affectionately called the post-PC era back then. No one could have imagined the range of developments that would result. After all, no one talks about PCs and smartphones today, except in the IT history channel. The device classes merge smoothly, and so many things have become "intelligent" since then and communicate with each other. The only thing that still doesn't exist is the intelligent refrigerator that orders its own groceries, which was promised back then. But there are many different types of software in countless products.
The fact that I committed myself to the quality of software back then was the right decision. Because without quality, there would never have been this acceptance of the products by the masses. Accordingly, a lot was and is invested here. The concept of quality has also changed over the years. Whereas in the past it was more about pure compliance with requirements, today it is the epitome of usability and user experience. To the same extent, my work has also changed. I remember: I used to sit at my desk for hours, preparing test data, specifying test cases and then automating some of them and struggling with the test environment. Today, it's completely different. The automation tools take so much routine work off my hands throughout the development process that I can focus almost entirely on designing new test ideas. Today, the implementation of these test ideas is child's play and can be done quickly. Back then, I never expected to be able to use so much creativity in my work. Fortunately, I soon started to learn creative techniques and to educate myself in this direction. The amount of possible trainings in this direction has grown steadily.
Yes, the work has become much more demanding, but the understanding of my role has also changed. In the past, as "the tester" of the team, I mostly took care of the systemor acceptance tests. Today, my expertise accompanies all quality measures throughout the entire course of the project. The teams have internalized the need for quality and enjoy working on it. No more eye rolling when someone suggests ideas for quality improvement. I had to acquire the ownership to do this. Where I used to blindly trust a test concept, I am now responsible like the others. This gives me the freedom to uncover quality problems and develop creative ideas to solve them.
In summary, I can say: My tasks as a tester have become significantly more demanding, but also more exciting, due to the complexity of the systems and the automation of simple testing activities. In the past few years, I have therefore had to work a lot on my creativity and openness and often dare to look beyond the established test methods. I have also had to take on significantly more personal responsibility and to this day have always been more active in making my contribution to projects.