“We need people hungry for knowledge and achievements” – what is it like to be a tester at Alfa Bank?

On the eve of the launch of the new course “Tester”, we talked to its authors – experts from Alfa-Bank about how the testing system was built in their companies and what requirements are placed on candidates, and also asked about the way to the profession and difficulties in their work.

Alexander Dolinsky, Head of Testing Group at Alfa-Bank and the author of the program for the Tester course in Netology:

“In Alfa-Bank, grocery development is carried out according to Scrum, therefore testing is also based on Scrum, that is, the whole team takes part in testing, but each at his own level of expertise in accordance with the testing pyramid.

Developers write unit tests and component tests, testers write E2E tests, UI tests and integration tests. Due to this, it is possible to keep the optimal balance of test time. On web projects, the testing uses the BDD approach; in the mobile direction, we use a certain mix of the BDD approach with our own groundwork. All testers are distributed among Scrum teams, so 80% of the time they devote to team tasks and 20% of time are spent on technical debts on a project or community task, through which they pump their skills in automation, CI / CD processes.

Usually we have several Scrum teams working on one product, so each team is assigned a team leader, who oversees the testing process within the product for all teams, helps to solve the arising difficulties, both technical and human. ”

Who take in Alfa Bank

“Alfa-Bank has been among the leaders in reliability and manufacturability of the services provided for many years – it is therefore extremely important that company employees are not indifferent to the processes, trying to constantly improve them and improve themselves.

We need the hungry for knowledge and fulfillment.

First of all, we look at the person, and only then at his background.
Certainly a big plus is the availability of technical education, although in general this is not a critical requirement. There are often cases when people came to our team from a completely different area without experience and necessary knowledge. They gained a serious level of expertise in the process of completing tasks.

From soft skills it is important for us that a person knows how to communicate and correctly express his thoughts (we work in teams), so that he is curious and knows how to ask questions and work with answers. For example, during interviews we give tasks for reasoning about testing a robot that must drive up to a client and pour coffee into a glass. There is no correct answer, but it is interesting to observe how a person tries to test this case.

The candidate who came only for money, without thematic hobbies and interests, will not exactly fit into our testing department. Such a person does not want to develop within the team, but for us it is important.

In Alfa-Bank, there is a frequent case when a specialist comes to the starting position and after a while develops to the test lead team or even switches to development. There are many examples when IT guys become successful Product Owner. We are for everyone to try himself in different directions and choose for development where he is most comfortable and where he can reach his potential. ”

Artem Badyshev, Testing Specialist at Alfa-Bank, came to the field of exploration, for a long time engaged in the processing and interpretation of seismic data, but always interested in IT. They asked Artyom about his way of testing and adaptation at Alfa-Bank.

How come in testing

“I have always been interested in information technology. In my profession, I indirectly faced the need to write any programs or scripts, but for this there was enough knowledge of the university.

I independently studied JAVA as a base, sometimes I read articles on Habré, but did not focus on any particular direction. I found almost any of them interesting, and it was difficult to choose one thing, to take the first step. What if I make a wrong choice? After all, until you find yourself inside the sphere, you will not understand how it actually works. In the learning process, all the materials that I found were most often superficial. And if I considered courses, I could not believe that after them I could get a job at least half confident in my competence.

I never thought about the profession of a tester, did not find it impressive.
In Alfa Bank, I was interviewed for the position of infrastructure manager. I had a general understanding of the duties and requirements, so I chose this particular specialty as the entry point to IT. At the interview I was offered to try myself as a tester, describing this post as one of the best for people who want to touch IT.

I spent some time trying to understand what testers really do. I wondered if I wouldn’t just sit there and thoughtlessly press some buttons without any development perspective.

But in the end I decided to try. I can say that I was very wrong: there was not a day that I was bored or felt that I was in some kind of stagnation. Tasks sea.

On the difficulties in adapting to the new sphere

“There is no such thing that you came and everything worked like clockwork. Changing the scope, you need to leave almost all the key skills that you acquired earlier, and open up to new knowledge. The first two weeks I did not understand what was going on at the meetings. All that did not ask right away, wrote down, memorized and voiced after the meetings.

On the first day of work, they put a mentor to me, who introduced me to the course of what was happening, patiently showed and told everything I did not understand. In Alfa Bank, it is so accepted. In addition to the mentor, there is a whole team of testers, each of whom is always ready to help you. If they read it, then let them know that I am very grateful to them for their responsiveness and understanding!

I adapted quickly, but I am still learning, and probably never will, just like every one of the people working in testing. Still, the sphere is constantly evolving. ”

Tips for professionals who want to test

“If you are looking for a real entry point to IT, then this is it – it will not be boring for sure. Thoughts that “I will sit for a while, I will test, and therefore I will be cutting applications,” disappear with time by themselves.

If you are seriously engaged in automation – you will encounter the technology stack to the full extent, then you will feel yourself as a cool developer.

There is always a place for creativity, and ideas are supported by the team.

I advise you to learn the basics of any object-oriented language and read someone else's code. I consider these skills to be the most important for a person who himself does not create yet, but wants to learn quickly, understanding the results of the work of professionals. ”

From the Editor

We in Netology are launching a new course in the profession "Tester", whose program has been prepared jointly with Alfa-Bank.

For 5 months of training, we will deal with manual and autotests, conduct unit-testing of the application, solve more than 40 tasks in Java, work with Selenium Webdriver and other testing tools, and Alfa-Bank will invite the best graduates for an interview.

Also on May 21, we invite you to an open class “Tester: requirements and prospects for work in Alfa-Bank”, which will be conducted by Alexander Dolinsky, the head of the testing team in Alfa-Bank and the author of the course.

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