Utest 3: My first paid cycle

I promised to keep you up to date about my Utest experience. I signed up to Utest some months ago.

When you sign up for Utest you have to create your profile. In this profile you can state your expertise and the set-up you have available for testing.  This information is of course important for Utest to select the right tester for the job: if the customer wants a dutch tester with an iPhone X and iOs etc… you could be the one…

After signing up you also have to perform an unpaid test cycle. Call it a test, for it is to see what your worth. I think it is very good that they have such a unpaid test cycle. Not only does it scare off those that are really not interested, you also learn how to work with the web application, and the online bug tracker. In june 2012 I blogged that I graduated the sandbox; optimistically I wrote: “I am curious how long it takes to get invited.”  But as you can see, it took a while.

To my experience getting an invite is not self evident. I expected to receive a simple mail with a nice assignment. But I learned that if you really want a job, you need to go and find it on the Utest forum. I did receive some invites, but most of them came at an inconvenient time, had a deadline on the same day and that sort of stuff.

So I was pleased to be invited to test a VOIP application for my iPhone. I had a whole week before the deadline, and it was mobile testing. Just what I was looking for. I really enjoyed doing the tests.

As a testconsultant I do a lot of advising, which reduces the time that I can do hands-on testing. I think it is vital to keep  feeling with the real activity of testing…..that is of course thinking about and performing tests. Utest often has cycles that give you a lot of freedom to perform exploratory testing, to experiment with how you do your test logging. And like always I stepped in that well known pitfall. I thought my bug report was clear…but also during this cycle I got a additional question. It happens to us all, I guess.  I only logged a few bugs, but they all got accepted. Besides the Testcycle payout, you get an extra pay-out for bug you report. If the customer finds the bug valuable, they increase the pay-out. I thought it was rewarding to see that one of my bugs, got a extra bonus. It made me feel like I really helped the customer.

Test cycles like this are a great opportunity to increase your technical skills. As I want to get more experienced with testing mobile apps, this cycle was just right.

Finally I like to comment that testing in your own free time, creates a nice balance between effort, pay-out and wanting to do your job right. I did most testing on one night, and like always it took a little longer than anticipated. I wanted to do the testing properly, write clear bug reports, but did not want to overdo it. For those testers that are paid a monthly salary, it is just a different feel. I think rewarding system learns me to focus on efficiency, quality and value. These three words became quite tangible when the evening progressed and it got late. It also got tangible when I received the extra value bonus on the bug report I mentioned before.

I’d love to do a new cycle soon. App testing, maybe something with cloud….