Magnet Forensics

Work Term 2

Position: Software Test Specialist

Semester: Fall 2019

Location: Waterloo

About Magnet Forensics


Magnet Forensics is a leader in digital forensics on a mission to empower individuals to seek justice and protect the innocent using advanced technology made easy and accessible for industry professionals to use. After almost 10 years, this amazing company continues to grow, improve and innovate by staying connected to their community and listening to what people want and need as they continue to make the world a better place.

Magnet Forensics is a company filled with passionate individuals who care about making a positive global impact as they support various law enforcement agencies and cooperations find, analyze and report digital evidence. They provide digital evidence solutions to be used during each step of a case to ensure that customers have the information they need from almost every platform including computer, mobile and cloud.

Magnet Forensics stands out from the competition not only with its innovative and cutting edge software but also their connection with their customers and the ability to efficiently and effectively provide solutions to their community. This amazing team that Magnet Forensics has built continues to develop as one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies while staying true to their values.

Throughout my time at this truly inspiring company, I was able to focus on improving my testing knowledge by supporting my team and learn more about what it takes to build an amazing community and culture as the one Magnet Forensics has created.


My Magnetic Contributions

Software Test Specialist

Overview:

My main role at Magnet was testing new developer additions and fixes before they were added to the company’s main products. I worked closely with my team members to understand the various aspects of the product that were affected and to ensure that these new additions were integrated smoothly. As I worked on testing more complex problems I was able to catch any unexpected changes before they were added into the product to ensure that our software is always to Magnet standards. In addition to my testing tasks, I also participated in daily meetings with my team to follow various scrum methodologies and improve the performance of the team as we worked towards our various goals and objectives.

My Tasks

Testing:

  • Review technical concepts to determine the expected outcome and changes
  • Understand new technical concepts
  • Be able to effectively communicate with the developer
  • Determine what aspects of the product that need to be tested
  • Use various tools to find and validate data
  • Find and share unexpected results from the change with the developer so they can be fixed
  • Debrief with other testers to share my findings and ensure that the important scenarios were tested
  • Ensure the change is successfully integrated into the product

Team Meetings

  • Participate in daily stand up meetings
  • Be on time and prepared for meetings
  • Offer insight on how the team is performing during retrospectives
  • Lead standup meetings when the Scrum Master is away
  • Help estimate difficulties of tasks from a testing or developer standpoint

Non-testing Tasks

  • Generate data from various devices and determine how it might be helpful during development
  • Update our Jira board to track the flow of tasks
  • Assist with staying up to date with the latest software and app updates
  • Work in the codebase to add new application information to our products

My Goals

I developed this goal to challenge myself to learn the new terminology used within the company so I could better understand various coding principles and products. Being able to understand what the developers are referencing and the ability to use the same terminology that is used throughout the company is important in my day to day job tasks. By the end of my coop term, I felt much more comfortable talking to my coworkers about the various technical aspects of our products and felt I was able to really understand what the team was talking about. This understanding was especially useful in meetings which allowed me to communicate my opinion or thoughts on various matters.
As my first time working in a more cooperate setting, learning and adapting to different scheduling and protocols was an important aspect of my term. I think the way Magnet uses scrum to structure their work schedules and stay on track is very interesting and wanted to challenge myself to learn more during my time at Magnet. I made sure to pay attention during the various types of meetings and really understand the layout of how everything flowed for the first bit of my coop. This prepared me to confidently plan for the meetings and even take on additional roles like reading out notes from my team members and facilitate discussion based on those topics. I feel like I know much more about scrum methodology from being able to participate in meetings like stand up, refinement, planning and retrospectives.
Magnet’s company size made it so I was able to observe and interact with individuals who are in varying roles within the company, both technical and non-technical. As I am just starting my career in the tech industry I find it fascinating all the different kinds of roles and opportunities there are within one company. In addition to talking to people from different areas of the company I also wanted to have some practical experience doing different tasks that weren’t testing related. Specifically, I was interested in helping with smaller development and coding tickets within my team as well as helping with meetings and more administrative tasks when needed. My team was very supportive of my goals and mentored me in completing 3 development tickets as well as encouraging me to lead stand up and even a retro meeting when our usual scrum master was unable to.
I developed this goal because I realized the importance of tester and developer demos and the role they play to effectively transfer knowledge. I used a clear set of questions to guide my demos so that I was able to gather everything I needed from the developer to successfully know where to start testing. Being able to have effective demos also helped in not over or under testing because I was able to ask the proper questions to determine exactly what in the product would be affected and which tests I could use to check those things.

Conclusion


Throughout my past four months at Magnet Forensics, I have learned so much not only from my testing and technical work on the products but also from adapting to working in a new team with different practices. My time at Magnet has helped shape my view of what I want to do moving forward in the tech industry. The support and encouragement from my team and company as a whole has been instrumental in creating an amazing learning and growing opportunity for me. I am very thankful for being able to try new things and be part of an impactful team that is solving such an important problem.