From Ja­nu­ary 2020 to mid-March 2020, I work­ed in the DMT (Ca­ta­lo­gue So­lu­ti­ons) de­part­ment at our lo­ca­ti­on in Co­lo­gne. This de­part­ment deals with the de­ve­lo­p­ment of the Tec­Doc Catalogue.

At the be­gin­ning of my ro­ta­ti­on pha­se, I re­cei­ved an in­tro­duc­tion to the team, the Tec­Doc Ca­ta­lo­gue and the tasks and re­spon­si­bi­li­ties the­re. Du­ring this time I was able to get to know the QA (Qua­li­ty Assu­rance) area bet­ter. First of all, I was as­si­gned to the ma­nu­al tests, whe­re I gai­ned an in­sight into the Tec­Doc Ca­ta­lo­gue with the help of pre­de­fi­ned test plans. Fur­ther­mo­re, I lear­ned how such test plans are struc­tu­red and writ­ten. In case I en­coun­te­red bugs du­ring this pro­cess, I had to note them down and for­ward them to the team.

Af­ter 3 weeks in the field of ma­nu­al test­ing, I got an in­sight into the field of au­to­ma­ted test­ing. The­re I was also in­tro­du­ced to the struc­tu­re of the au­to­ma­ted tests. My first task the­re was to wri­te smal­ler tests with the frame­work “Pro­tra­c­tor” and the tool “Cu­cum­ber”. For in­s­tance, I au­to­ma­ti­cal­ly star­ted the Chro­me brow­ser, which then opens Goog­le, en­ters a search term, sel­ects the first dis­play­ed link and opens its page.

Af­ter a short “prac­ti­ce pha­se” I was al­lo­wed to work di­rect­ly on the Tec­Doc Ca­ta­lo­gue and wri­te au­to­ma­ted tests for it. One of the­se test ca­ses, for ex­am­p­le, che­cked the num­ber of pro­ducts in a list and their ch­an­ges when a dif­fe­rent fil­ter op­ti­on was selected.

An­o­ther QA task in­vol­ves run­ning the smo­ke and full re­gres­si­on tests and ana­ly­zing the re­sul­ting re­port, as well as fi­xing any bugs that occur.

I re­al­ly en­joy­ed my time with the team in Co­lo­gne. The­re I also dis­co­ver­ed my new pas­si­on of au­to­ma­ted test­ing, which I am also able to con­ti­nue in the IM-Tools team.