Essential Tools Every QA-Expert Should Have
- Written by Oleh Sadykow
The profession of QA engineer is very important and requires a wide range of soft and hard skills. In an effort to provide the sky-high quality of software, a competent tester has to check its different aspects in detail using various techniques and approaches. Numerous tools have been developed to optimize, simplify, and accelerate the QA team's work. Through trial and error, every QA expert picks up the most helpful tools for software testing creating a unique toolset. Still, there are some testing tools that have become extremely popular and are used by QA engineers all over the world. In this article, we will define these tools. But, first of all, let's define the types of testing tools. As was mentioned, testers have to deal with different aspects of software performance. That is why they have to utilize different types of testing tools, among which are:
Test management tools;
Bug management tools;
Automated testing tools;
API testing tools;
Multi-browser testing tools;
Multi-device testing tools;
Performance testing tools;
Security testing tools.
Due to my experience as co-founder at DeviQA, a leading software testing company, I want to share the most useful software testing tools list and my view for each of these tools.
Here is the most useful software testing tools list: Here is the most useful software testing tools list:
TestRail
It is a comprehensive, highly customizable web-based test case management solution. With its help, QA engineers can effectively manage either manual or automated tests. Super informative dashboards, reports, and metrics let monitor testing progress. Besides, TestRail can be easily integrated with the most popular bug tracking systems and automated tests.
Jira Software
It is one of the most well known and widely used bug/issue tracking and project management tools. This incredibly convenient and customizable solution helps create, prioritize, edit, and track bug reports, get statistics and analytics, and draw up complete reports. In addition, Jira Software is not just used for recording and reporting but also integrated directly with most test management tools and developer tools for end-to-end traceability. And a cherry on the cake is Jira Cloud mobile app using which QA experts can settle bug issues any time using their favorite devices.
Selenium
It is one of the most widely spread automation tools for QA. Selenium has been developed to provide automated testing of functional aspects for web applications, various platforms, and browsers. Selenium supports all the main programming languages and all operational systems. Using this solution, QA engineers can significantly save time, as tests can be executed simultaneously.
Postman
Postman is a robust tool that automates API testing. Posman considerably eases complex API testing. Integrating Postman with, for example, Jenkins, it is easy to create a CI/CD pipeline. It can also be added to an already existing pipeline as a build step.
Jenkins
It is a popular continuous integration solution that lets test changes of the codebase in real time. Using Jenkins, you can automate build testing, fastly find and iron out codebase problems. This open-source tool runs on the servers in a container and supports different version control tools.
LambadaTest
LambdaTest is a powerful cloud-based platform for cross-browser testing of web apps and websites. It provides an extensive range of browsers and their respective versions. Its main advantage over other similar tools is high speed; their response to users' requests is really quick as well. In addition to real-time testing and automated testing, LambdaTest provides Visual UI testing. The tool can be integrated with the most famous project management systems and bug tracking solutions.
DeviceAnywhere
This solution enables QA engineers to test on real devices either for Android or iOS. The free and paid versions are available. The free version offers limited functionality providing a base for a testing start.
WebLOAD
It is a brilliant load and performance testing solution for web apps. WebLOAD is perfectly suitable for projects with heavy user load and complicated testing requirements. Using this tool, QA experts can conduct load and stress testing, generating load either from the cloud or on-premises machines. The tool provides a comprehensive analysis of web app performance, detects issues and weaknesses, supports hundreds of technologies.
Netsparker Security Scanner
It is an effective security testing tool that automatically scans websites, web apps, and web APIs to identify security vulnerabilities as SQL injection or cross-site scripting. The found vulnerabilities are verified to prove that they are indeed real.
The list of the most useful testing tools is not limited to the mentioned ones, as QA experts can tweak and extend it according to their own experience and project needs. Still, if you do not use some of the tools from the list, we recommend you to try.
