Friday, June 10, 2011

Testing Forums and Web Sites

There are quite a few forums and web pages devoted to the testing craft in part or in whole, and they seem to be multiplying.
Here are some of the active ones that I am currently aware of and participate in (or at least browse occasionally):

Forum Sites - these sites are primarily for posting and discussing questions in an open user environment.

Dedicated to software testing and QA, lots of specific forums for different test tools.

A part of the UTest paid online software testing community, the forums also cover test discussions that are not specific to the UTest community.  Registration for the forums is different from the main UTest registration.

News Sites - these sites primarily contain industry articles.  Several of them have discussion groups as well.

Targeted towards the software industry in general and not just testing.  StickyMinds is part of TechWell, and seems to be on track to be consumed by the parent site at some point.

Publishers of Software Test & Quality Assurance Magazine.  In addition to the articles, this site has the concept of groups that you can earn recognition awards by joining and participating in.

A relatively new site hosted by SmartBear software, content is good and growing but the discussion groups haven't really taken off yet.  This is also a more general software quality site, but is broken down by areas like 'Quality' so it's easy to find what you're interested in.

This used to be one of my primary go to sites for aggregating test related blog posts, but has mostly died.  I list it for completeness.

Other
Many well known testers in the industry have their own blogs, which can usually be found by Internet searches or references in their postings to the sites above.  As they come and go, and appeal to different audiences, I won't attempt to list them here (maybe a subject for another post?).  Most of them as well as some of the sites above are active on Twitter, and there are testing communities on Facebook and LinkedIn as well if you are a member of those sites.

I encourage you to browse through the sites above, and consider participating in some of the discussion groups if you find a topic you're interested in.  News is always flowing in the testing and software development world, and keeping your mind active and engaged with the latest ideas will help to keep your job interesting, as well as maintaining your skills and marketability.
 
I'm sure there are probably some I missed, please feel free to comment on your favorites.