Software Testing Blog

Earlier this week, uTest blew past the 20,000 tester mark in our humble “little” community. As we’ve all witnessed on the Tester Forums, the uTest community continues to grow – not only in sheer size, diversity and coverage – but also in the level of testing skill, engagement and collaboration.

In light of this big news, we wanted to share some other community milestones from 2009:

• Tester Forums:  launched in May, our new testers-only forums are engaging software testers from all over the world with varying testing and industry experience (more than 1,200 members participating already!)
• Three Bug Battles:  So far in 2009, we’ve awarded more than $11,000 in prize money for our quarterly competitions: Social Networks (Facebook/MySpace/LinkedIn), Twitter Applications (top six Twitter desktop apps), Search Engines (Bing/Google/Yahoo)
• Guest Blogger Series:  Top testers within our community are not just active on the forums, but also invited to contribute their hard-earned knowledge on the uTest Blog
• Tester Case Studies:  We shine our spotlight on a wide range of testers who have interesting, informative or inspiring story – from novice to expert, and from Boston to Berlin to Bangalore
• Revamped tester re-profiling system:  To better match testers with relevant projects

For me personally, it is exciting to watch the community grow, not just in number but also in maturity. Aside from the milestones mentioned above, we have also nominated our first three forums moderators (thanks Joseph, Bernard and Bryan!), and plan to increase this number as we see more leaders step up to the task of mentoring and sharing knowledge.

As we reflect back upon these milestones, we recognize the increased need to help new uTesters ramp up quickly before tackling their first uTest projects. Additionally, we have witnessed the expertise and passion of our top testers, and plan to provide opportunities for leadership roles within this passionate community. Here are a few initiatives that we have planned for the coming months in 2009:

• A robust “Help Repository” to provide testers with detailed answers to their questions
• Weekly tester webinars geared specifically toward helping testers succeed in uTest
• Various pilot projects for our top testers to provide opportunities to lead, mentor, and earn more money

Have other ideas for how we can recruit even more great testers?  We’re still looking for more Mac testers, mobile testers and European testers – three areas where we have more work than we can keep up with!  If you know which sites we should advertise on, which newsletters we should sponsor, or which groups we should join, drop us a comment or send us a note.