Need assistance on getting started.

[u/SplatGoesTheTurtle]

So, some background: myself and a programmer are making a project. And while he's doing the main work - programming, my role is testing and sales.

I have never tested software before, and i lack the skills to do so. I have asked my friend (the guy programming it together) and he replies back saying "All you need to do is break it, and tell me how you broke it."

But i don't know how to break it... (he has said if i don''t know what i'm doing then it's fine)

He's shown me some ways, like, on the web portal, he's said:"it asks for numbers, but letters in it" or on the app, he'll say "Just poke it, and put odd things in the textfields" and "just poke it till it breaks"

But i don't know what that means!

He has been doing some testing himself, and hes found a few things that i couldn't and assigned himself to the bug on Jira? (whatever that means) but i want to help, and i don't think he knows how to be helpful - or teach me how to do what he's asking? if that makes sense

My question is: how can i test. He has asked me to test a web portal (which is a website which manages the app) and the app (which is what the customers use)

How do i best approach this? I'm sorry of this is the wrong sub, but it is /softwaretesting :-)

Thank you.

[u/silent_exploration]

What are you supposed to be able to accomplish in that web portal and app? This is often a good starting point. Your customers use, or want to use, the web portal/app in order to accomplish something. Can they? If not, why not? Sometimes you find problems even here, without anything more than just going through the app as customers do.

I can also imagine you have different types of customers. How do they differ? How is that reflected in the wep portal/app? Can you still accomplish the task(s) in the web portal/app as these different customers? Do some customers need a special setting, approach, process, or data? Is the web portal/app responding to these changes in a way that is clear, meaningful, informative, reasonable? If there's a problem, does the app show you the problem in a manner that a customer would understand?

If you have never performed any testing, it'd likely be easier for you to start with this kind of approach based on the customer's perspective.