5 Questions For Pradeep Soundararajan

Pradeep Soundararajan of the Tester Tested!" blog took time out to answer my questions.

True to form, his reply didn't just answer my questions, he also asked me some, gave me a Monty Python reference and pointed out there were more than 5 questions " The 5 questions remind me of Michael Hunters interview of DDJ blog plus also reminds me of this scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "



1. Why did you start blogging and what were you hoping to get out of it ? ( and have you got what you hoped for ? )

I was sharing all my ideas about testing to a friend of mine who worked as a developer. He patiently listen to me and asked me questions about the ideas I shared. One day, he asked me, "These ideas seem to be brilliant. Are you blogging all this for the benefit of the community?" and I asked, "What's that?"


That's how I started to blog.

As maybe everyone else, I got inspired from blogs that have a huge reader base, comments, and influence it has on the community. I hoped my blog would have all that and maybe even more.

I learned that having a dream of huge reader base and lots of visitors is not what I should be aiming for because my mission was to learn to test better and benefit the community of software testers.

I think I am getting that. I am learning to test better each day and I blog about my different kinds of experiences. I have expanded my blogging to audio and video.

If anyone digs deeper on my blog, they would also understand that my writing skills has improved tremendously.

2. What have you learned from doing your blog ?

The first thing I learned after I started blogging was that my ideas weren't as brilliant as I thought. After that I learned a lot of things. As I mentioned, I learned about my writing skills, and my blog opened me up to different channels and people.

3. Do you track your visitors - if so, any unusual searches to find your blog ?

I do track my visitors because its fun. Of late, I have been doing less of that because I have no time for that most times.

As you might be aware I protest against faking experience in testing because I think it is spoiling our craft. I have a podcast and a couple of posts on that topic. I found some people have started to search in Google "Pradeep faking testing experience" to probably find my posts on that topic.

I have observed with some bloggers in India who write posts based on the popularity of search term and I think those posts stink a lot.


4. Do you have a favorite post that you have written ?

All my posts that have irritated bad testers ( that I think are bad testers ) are my favorite. I get all kinds of abusive and harsh worded mails and comments when I have written against commercial certification, fake experience stuff, ROI in testing, ideas of test automation and specifically against scripted testing.

5. Any advice to new bloggers ?

Starting a blog is simple but maintaining it needs dedication, passion, energy, time, experience, willingness to learn and more. You may have all of this but not at required quantity.

Many people give up blogging because no one is reading it. Well, you must understand that your blog is going to live beyond your own life. Maybe it will stay as long as internet, people and the server where you have hosted is alive.

If you want people to like your blog, be yourself.
The success of a blog is not based on the number of readers and or the comments. It is the influence on yourself first and then maybe others.

Enjoy reading your own blog and you'd like to write more.
If you think you are smart and your readers are dumb then you'd be exposing your dumbness to the world. Its free, you may try doing that.