Summer 2020 Work Term

BlackBerry

Software Test Developer Student

For my Summer 2020 co-op I worked as a Software Test Developer Student remotely from home. This will be discussing all my goals, Job description, and everything I learned during this workterm.
BlackBerry was originally founded under the name Research in Motion(RIM) in 1984 in Waterloo. They have worked in many industries including smartphones, security, embedded systems (QNX OS), enterprise management systems, and much more. They now have offices all around the world operating in 30 countries with 48 locations. Creating and developing products such as EPP/Optics, EDR/Protect, QNX, BBM, just to name a few. In the past few years BlackBerry has shifted away from being known for developing smartphones to become a security giant in the enterprise space, working with 18 out of the G20 governments, and 9 out of 10 of the largest car OEMS.
Goal 1
  • Learning Goal
    GLOBAL UNDERSTANDING - Global Understanding
  • Goal
    Understand the Agile mindset and tools used with it in my workplace.
  • Action Plan
    Get familiar with Jira and contribute more to daily standups and sprint planning meetings
  • Measure of Success
    When I am comfortable to complete Jira story/defect pages on my own and can use the site efficiently to find information. Be able to speak freely during team meetings and contribute to the teams discussions
  • Reflection
    After this term, I now feel ready to continue to any other job using the Agile mindset. I am no longer scared to create JIRA stories and defects creating them with confidence, what I am trying to say comes across clearly. By the end of the term, I was also comfortable to speak freely during team meetings and discussions
Goal 2
  • Learning Goal
    PROFESSIONAL & ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR - Teamwork
  • Goal
    Be comfortable reaching out to people in and outside of your team for information.
  • Action Plan
    Reach out to other people to start a dialog and ask for help or information when needed
  • Measure of Success
    When I am comfortable to reach out to others for information when needed without hesitation
  • Reflection
    By the end of the work term, I was comfortable reaching out to anyone I needed information from. emailing people from all around the globe in the company. This was in part because how welcoming everyone in the company was
Goal 3
  • Learning Goal
    PROFESSIONAL & ETHICAL BEHAVIOUR - Personal Organization/Time Management
  • Goal
    Be able to estimate the time it will take to complete tasks, and be able to break larger tasking into smaller tasks
  • Action Plan
    Take time before projects to step back an analysis of the assignment trying to break it into smaller tasks see how much time each one will take
  • Measure of Success
    When I am comfortable to give deadlines to my employer with confidence and be able to break tasks up so I can let my team know where I am in it
  • Reflection
    I still struggle with estimating how long some tasks will take but I have made a lot of progress on this, and think this will be an ever going goal always getting better at estimating tasks.
Goal 4
  • Learning Goal
    LITERACY - Information Literacy
  • Goal
    Be able to read documentation or code and understand how to use the tools
  • Action Plan
    Try to be more independent with each product asking for less help trying to figure out information for myself, from documentation from within the system
  • Measure of Success
    able to understand a tool used by the team by reading the documentation
  • Reflection
    I am now able to use the wiki pages efficiently, getting all the information I need out of them.
Goal 5
  • Learning Goal
    COMMUNICATING - Written Communication
  • Goal
    Be able to write emails and Jira defects the contain all the necessary information so they don't have to ask for more later on
  • Action Plan
    re-read emails and jira pages before submitting them
  • Measure of Success
    Completing Emails and Jira pages without someone replaying for more information
  • Reflection
    I am no longer scared to create JIRA stories and defects creating them with confidence, what I am trying to say comes across clearly.
During my time at BlackBerry I have learned many new skills, not just in the technical side of computing but in the business side as well. My job title at BlackBerry was Test Development Student so during my term I was responsible for many jobs in the testing realm of computing, including manual and automated testing, as well as contributing to mock testing software that was used to test the product. I was also responsible for creating and verifying JIRA bugs after they were fixed and continued to support a previous project after I moved on to a different project.

During my time at BlackBerry I worked on 2 projects, one which was targeted towards Android and iOS mobile devices and the other was targeted towards the QNX operating system. The first project I worked on took up most of my time at BlackBerry and even when most of the heavy work was done, I was left on as support for the project just coming back to verify JIRA's when needed. This project taught me a lot about the business side of computing since I have never worked with JIRA, Gerrit, or Jenkins tools before this work term as they aren't taught in school. I had no need for tools like this when working on personal projects - it was really eye opening. It showed me how to communicate with different people in and outside of your team, and also how to find information for yourself using in house wiki pages, as well as to ask for help when it's needed as I could no longer just google the answer. For the first project I was responsible for doing manual testing on a test application a co-worker create, as well as automating some tests using an in house automation tool in addition to the test application. The second part of the project was using a mock python script to make sure the correct data as showing up.

The second project I worked on was the most interesting part to me as it was in an area I have never worked in, using tools and knowledge I already had. My task was to port a testing framework to work on remote machine using ssh to achieve this, as the environment this will be used to test doesn't have a lot of resources besides basic Unix commands and ssh. I used many skills that I have learned on my own previous to starting in this job, including Python, Java, bash scripts, and Linux tools. Using these skills plus lots of others that I learned on the job I able to complete many tasks, on the job learning many new skills for example working with Objective-C, and Git. Git was a really interesting tool because even though we were taught it in school they never went in depth with Git and only showed us the tip of the iceberg of what it can do.
This work term as taught me so much more than I ever could have hoped to learn in 3 months. It has also shown me the importance of testing your code and having other people to do it for you, because with so many moving parts it's very easy to miss some information. I hope from this you can see how much I was able to learn because of the great people around me who challenged and supported me in developing my knowledge and skills during such a difficult time of working remotely.
Thank you to BlackBerry and all of my coworkers that make this work term possible.
Special Thanks to my mentor at BlackBerry who enabled me to learn and appreciate what testers do during this term.