My journey with Postman!!

Dear People, 

Hope you are all safe and healthy…

I was thinking for a while to pen down this post.

How it started?

Almost like most of you guys, I too started Postman for testing the API’s manually. The developers will provide us set of collections where-in the credentials will be stored (some generic ones for testing purposes), and we will just hitting the endpoint and check that we receive 2XX series response codes. If there’s some other response code series then, will reach out to the developer. 

As a Tester, I was curious about the “Tests” section and I started with the readily available code snippets. I understood that these are the assertions we do as part of the response instead of manually checking them. That was the beginning of my journey with API’s. 

My Team Leader insisted us to learn “Postman”, so that we don’t want to perform front end tests, we can get access to the API’s and test as part of back end. So he helped us to learn and explore Postman. Everyday he used to assign some tasks to complete and end of the day he validates our solution. Even if we stuck-up somewhere he patiently explains the logic. He suggested to start with Test Data process creation using API’s. Because we had a requirement to create umpteen number of test data for testing a solution. But we never had any ready made collections this time, all we had is the API documentation for the product. So from the documentation I learnt how to build requests, then gradually customized the test data, data driven approach, collection runner features. Finally we had a beautiful collection ready with the authentication, test data creation/updation. From zero, we now had a collection to create tons of test data in single click. We customized them based on our needs.

Postman Community Experience: 

In this process, Google was most preferred buddy right? So, I googled for many of queries and most of them were already available in “Postman Community” forum. But I was so keen to get my solutions, so I copied the solution and started back on tweaking them as per my needs. 

And one day I signed-up to the Community forum. I was seeing some questions which was similar to the problem I faced few months back. I had lots of hesitation whether to go ahead or not. Finally I pushed away all my hesitations and started answering the queries I could. I was actually following some great people in the Community already. Then in few months I became a frequent visitor, I started to search and tag the older posts for some newer queries. I started writing some articles/stories and shared under “Community showcase” category, which might be useful for the some one, some day. By this time I am already addicted to this forum space and started visiting almost everyday. 

One day I got a email from “Hannah”, she is a Technical Community Manager at Postman. She had mentioned that she is planning me to feature as “Community Spotlight”. Few days later we both connected and I still remember those moments. She is a wonderful soul and cheerful person. After few days, I was featured in their blogpost for being an active community contributor. https://blog.postman.com/community-spotlight-pricilla-belwin/

This post/day remains close to my heart ever. I was elated. Emotionally this is the day where I felt I can achieve more and more, not only by learning new things and also by lending the helping hand to whomsoever need it. Slowly my relationship with API’s and Postman grew stronger and closer. I explored and learnt lot about API’s and JavaScript. I learnt the essential JavaScript. All these finally helped to build my confidence. 

While wrapping up the 2020, another surprise element is I got a special mention in the newsletter of Postman.

That’s sweet right?

Starting with the internal and external presentations/webinar:

My Team Leader suggested me to prepare some tutorial documents for the new joiners, since we had planned to hire new API Testers. 

I had a detailed research and learnt thorough tons and tons of websites to know more about the API’s and API Testing process. That’s where I learnt so many technical jargons, everyday was a process of finding the pearl from bottom of the ocean. Finally I had prepared API testing tutorial, Postman tutorial document and a kinda activity document and collection for the newbies to the Team. 

So by now I have conducted few internal sessions in my organization which helped me to improve my public speaking skills and confidence.

Then I got this sweet note from one of my favorite person,

By month of April I got an opportunity to talk in a virtual meetup conducted by “Test Tribe Community”, which is one of the biggest QA community based out of India. We planned for a two hour session where-in to start with API basics, API Testing and Postman features. 

You can view the YouTube recording of the session here.

Becoming a Postman Supernova:

Few weeks later, one day I wake up to a email from Hannah. It was a welcome email for becoming an official supernova. I can proudly represent Postman hereafter.

I was overjoyed to see the below post: 

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6792941275915145216/

To know more about the Postman Supernova program please check here.

I have got few badges so far from Postman:

Other Community experiences:

I joined few other communities after Postman community and I started building my network. I communicate with many people today and I am so happy that I could help/mentor few people. 

Also recently I got an opportunity to share my experiences so far through a YouTube video series “TesterSpeak” by Test Chat Community. You can view my interview here. 

Also through Hannah, I came to know about “Women in API’s” community. I am learning a lot from there too…

Finally,

So, after reading my story you would have realized how I started and where I stand by now. Till date I am learning new cool things in API’s, Postman and JavaScript. Of course I just know only few things, there are lot more to explore about them, I will keep learning and will try my best to help/contribute as much as I can. 

Throughout this journey, I met many lovely, like-minded people. Especially people from Postman, are very helpful and supportive to me and other community contributors as well. 

Also many people from my Organization supported and motivated me to give my best. I cherish the moments with my mentors/leads/managers.

Final words,

If you are not into community before please join one now.

Be confident and polite while answering other people’s question.

You can help and inspire many people around you everyday.

I wrote this down to inspire some people, specially the Test Engineer’s around the globe to break their shell and prove that every tester is irreplaceable and unique in their own way. See you soon in my next post, until then a “Person among you”!!

I hope you find your passion and achieve the inner peace. All the best!!