So many changes are happening in the IT Industry worldwide that raise the need to continuously improve your skills and technological knowledge to tackle increasingly complex testing challenges.
In most companies, there’s a tendency to stick to a “tried and tested” approach at most times. But there can be better ways to do what you’re doing now.
When you are part of a testing community, you are no longer on your own. Whether you are seeking new updates and knowledge, asking for expert advice, looking for opportunities to connect with peer testers, or looking for a solution for a problem you encountered, testing communities are your greatest ally.
This article will discuss 15 prominent online testing communities every tester should consider joining to enhance their professional journey.
The Role of a Community
A community forms when people with similar interests, backgrounds, and goals come together to share their ideas and expertise with one another.
It is not just a learning resource but a support system that facilitates collaboration and networking to stay informed, sharpen skills, and help each other out.
Even though communities used to be traditionally confined to physical spaces, the internet has drastically transformed how people connect. Now, individuals can easily communicate and interact with others in their communities over vast geographical distances within seconds. Essentially, joining a community and actively participating helps tap into the global network of professionals who excel in their craft. Such communities offer webinars, forums, or social media groups to provide an invaluable platform for continuous learning and problem-solving opportunities.
Importance of Communities in Software Development and Testing Efforts
Online software testing groups, software testing websites, and other similar communities present an excellent opportunity for testers to share knowledge, encourage, and grow.
Here are several key attributes that make a software testing community a rich source of support for development and testing efforts.
Access to niche expertise
Even when it comes to testing alone, there are multiple specific areas, such as test automation, security testing, and regression testing. Testing communities are great platforms to connect with specialists in these distinct domains and seek knowledge that might not be available in general resources.
Promotes best practices
Connecting with seasoned professionals with hands-on experience facilitates testers and developers to stay informed on the industry’s best practices. Members of a community stand to gain by witnessing these practices, seeing how standards are applied in testing efforts, and hearing unbiased opinions of frameworks and tools to improve the quality and efficiency of their own work.
Collaboration and peer support
Sometimes, you might encounter problems you can’t resolve on your own, and documentation doesn’t help. Communities foster an environment where testers collaborate to address these challenges. They offer insights from different perspectives and come up with innovative and more effective testing solutions.
Latest updates on industry trends
Actively engaging in communities ensures that developers and testers are aware of industry innovations and emerging technologies. It helps them stay competitive by equipping them with knowledge and skills relevant to current market demands.
Support and motivation
Testing communities offer testers a space to ask questions, share frustrations and pain points, and celebrate success with others who understand and face the same challenges. Therefore, it presents opportunities for boosting morale and reducing burnout.
Why You Should Join the Testing Community
Joining a testing community has many benefits for career advancement and professional growth. It provides exposure to an environment where you interact with other experts first-hand and learn a bit more about new concepts, tools, tips, and common challenges every single day.
Share and expand your knowledge base
Even though personal projects and self-learning are essential for deepening your testing knowledge and skills, a wealth of undocumented experience and knowledge awaits you within a community. The discussions, problem-solving opportunities, news on the latest trends, expert advice on a variety of testing areas, meetups, webinars, and workshops are just a part of the shared knowledge and opportunities for learning a community offers. Not only that, but it is also your stage to speak up and help fellow testers if you are an expert in a particular area.
Networking opportunities
Communities are powerful networking platforms that help you sometimes go beyond the screen and expand your reach in the testing domain. They help build professional connections that can lead to mentorship, job opportunities, and even collaboration on projects. In addition, regularly collaborating with peer testers to find solutions together is also an amazing opportunity to connect and collectively come up with innovative solutions.
Professional growth
Everything considered, it is not just the technical expertise gained through communities that contributes to your professional growth. Soft skills such as communication, logical thinking, and negotiation improve through continuous interaction with peer testers and industry experts to help your personal growth. Together, these technical and soft skills help you reach new heights in your career by enhancing your capacity and prepping you for more complex roles.
Top 15 Online Communities for Testers
If everything that we discussed above has got you hooked on joining a testing community, here are the top 15 to choose from:
Ministry of Testing
The Ministry of Testing is one of the largest and most well-established testing communities worldwide. It is a platform where tens of thousands of industrial experts come together to share knowledge and experiences and grow as a community.
Members: Over 25k
Key highlights:
- A wide variety of resources such as events, courses, certifications, newsletters, scholarships, podcasts, community-curated software testing tool guides, and much more.
- TestBash global conferences and 99-minute testing challenges.
- The “Club,” a highly active forum where you can raise questions, share advice, and learn from peers.
- Several membership tiers, including Club (free), Professional, and Unlimited.
The Test Tribe
The Test Tribe is India’s largest testing community, providing dedicated support for individuals seeking professional growth in testing. It is a rich source of learning material and ample guidance from industrial experts to help you step up the career ladder with enhanced knowledge and skills.
Members: Over 120k
Key highlights:
- Comprehensive courses on testing tools and concepts, live training, fireside chats, meetups, and one-on-one mentoring.
- Testflix virtual software testing conference with 50+ experts and over 20k signups.
- Worqference, TribeQonf, QonfX conferences.
- TTTribeCast webinars.
- AMA (Ask Me Anything) sessions with experts.
Selenium Community
If you are a developer or a tester working with the comprehensive suite of testing tools and libraries Selenium offers, it is a good idea to stay updated with the Selenium community. Selenium is a go-to tool for web automation testing with a rich collection of user-contributed resources.
Members: Over 280k users, 757 contributors, and around 10k members in the Slack channel
Key highlights:
- User group, chat room, and GitHub discussions to raise questions.
- Opportunities to contribute to documentation and code.
- Meetups and Selenium Conf conferences.
AST (Association for Software Testing) Community
AST is a platform dedicated to helping individuals become better testers by providing them with a platform to self-learn, network with experts, and get hands-on experience through workshops.
Key highlights:
- Comprehensive black box testing courses from foundation to advanced levels.
- CAST conferences for testers, by testers.
- Testing events, newsletters, and volunteering opportunities.
EuroSTAR Huddle
This is one of the largest software testing and quality assurance resource platforms in Europe, growing together with the famous EuroSTAR conference since 1993. EuroSTAR Huddle is a must-join community for testers coming from all sorts of backgrounds to connect and collaborate.
Key highlights:
- EuroSTARConf and AutomationSTAR conferences targeting the European testing community.
- RisingSTAR testing awards.
- A Different Me podcast to discuss diversity and promote inclusion.
- Blog, webinars, eBooks, AI Deep Dive sessions.
LambdaTest Community
LambdaTest is a powerful and robust cloud-based platform that provides cross-browser testing for over 3000 browser versions, real-device cloud for native app testing, blazing fast testing cloud, and Kane AI testing assistant for a user base of over 2 million. The LambdaTest community is a forum that helps developers and testers from over 130 countries connect, raise their concerns, and learn about web development, testing, and DevOps.
Members: Over 100k
Key highlights:
- LambdaTest certifications for test automation, boot camps, and workshops.
- Open source grants of $250,000 for open source projects and contributors.
- Voices of Community sessions and TestMu conference with over 60 industry expert speakers.
- LambdaTest Spartans community advocacy program for highly motivated individuals trying to bring about innovative changes.
Cucumber Community
Cucumber is one of the most popular tools for BDD (behavior-driven development). Their community is a fantastic space for BDD practitioners to gather and share knowledge.
Members: Over 80k in their SmartBear community
Key highlights:
- Blog, podcasts, and inspirational projects using Cucumber.
- Opportunities to contribute to documentation and code.
- Learning material such as eBooks, webinars, and case studies.
- Cucumber school.
Test Masters Academy
Test Masters Academy (TMA) is known for its top testing conferences, which target test automation, testing, quality leadership, and quality assurance. If you want to learn about these domains, join the TMA community to learn from experts and accelerate your professional growth.
Members: Over 3k
Key highlights:
- Specializes in testing and quality assurance conferences, webinars, and workshops.
Automation Testing Community
If you are a fan of automation testing, the Automation Testing Community is a good platform to connect with domain experts through events and even refer to previous session recordings for self-learning.
Members: Around 4k
Key highlights:
- Online events conducted by experts, learning material such as videos and articles.
- Well-seasoned speakers in the automation testing domain.
TechWell Hub
This is an ideal platform where professionals from all development, testing, security, and operations domains can come together to connect, learn, and contribute to delivering better and more innovative software solutions. You can participate in several TechWell communities, such as AgileConnection, Women Who Test, StickyMinds, and the TechWell Hub Slack community.
Members: Over 8k (Slack)
Key highlights:
- STAR Testing, Agile + DevOps, AI Con USA conferences.
- Podcasts, training and consulting, certifications.
New Relic
New Relic is one of the leading observability platforms. It offers end-to-end monitoring and observability tools that incorporate AI-driven anomaly detection. It provides support and knowledge of best practices to testers working on, focusing on the APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tools offered by New Relic.
Members: Over 16k paying customers
Key highlights:
- New Relic blog, events, newsroom, and webinars.
- Community forum and direct contact options with the support team.
- New Relic University to follow learning paths and training courses on observability, performance testing, distributed tracing, etc.
Cypress Gitter Community
If you are working on or planning on working with Cypress end-to-end testing tool, this community offers significant immediate and practical support, with real-time collaboration and communication with fellow Cypress users on the Cypress Gitter community chat. You can post your questions here and get solutions with the help of experts easily.
Members: Around 13k
Key highlights:
- CypressConf conferences that dive into the intricacies of the latest developments in testing.
- Workshops, learning material such as blog articles, webcasts, and meetups.
- Cypress ambassador program.
Telerik Testing Community
If you are more into functional UI testing, RESTful API testing, and test automation or use or plan to use Telerik Test Studio, this is a support group you can use to level up your knowledge and get answers to any queries you get during hands-on testing.
Key highlights:
- Test Studio forum.
- Webinars, whitepapers, video guides, and demos.
- Test Studio standard, virtual classroom, and customized training.
QCommunity
QCommunity is your go-to platform if you are a tester looking for opportunities where AI-powered codeless test automation on the cloud is involved. They have a wealth of resources and collaborating opportunities on no-code test automation.
Key highlights:
- Q Academy and Q Certifications.
- QCommunity Evangelist program to directly contribute to the community.
- Community access, meetups, AMAs, conferences, and hackathons.
Testing Tech News (TTN)
If you want to stay updated on the latest testing innovations, technologies, and news, TTN is a community you should definitely join. It is a knowledge hub full of emerging trends in the testing domain, with an interactive discussion environment, a space for testers to showcase their innovations, and a place to connect with professionals.
Members: Over 5k
Key highlights:
- Learning material, workshops, webinars, and expert opinion on queries.
- Job opportunities, collaboration, and freelancing gigs.
- Space for personal branding.
In a Nutshell
Communities are important. They help you find ways of connecting with the community of testers present all around the world and let you share insights on the latest trends.
Doing so lets you keep relevant with what’s happening while also focusing on self-improvement.
Thank you for reading.
Nathaniel Kenvel
Alexander Wenel
Sagi Medina
