At first glance, testing may look straight-forward and simple. But not only verifying and validating the specifications, we are supposed to improve the product and the product development processes. Revealing weaknesses and improvement rooms in the product helps us to make our services better, but how about preventing them in the first place?
Beyond reporting bugs, testers can increase the overall efficiency in various different ways. So, obviously it is not easy and needs to focus on numerous aspects. Sometimes a tester may concentrate on analyzing the new deployment package, and sometimes he/she may need to coach team mates to build a holistic quality lifecycle.
Thus, a creative, empathetic, good communicator tester can influence and improve the product, project, company and the community. These are only a subset of all skills a good tester holds. So, what other skills help us to perform well and efficiently?
I have collected various skills that a tester should have. I aimed to categorize several of them from different perspectives like communication, agility, problem solving, efficiency and others.
Software testing requires development skills in terms of automation and CI/CD on the one hand and social skills on the other hand. There are tough responsibilities to hold like release management. It looks like we have to be a superhero holding all these qualifications. But we are human beings. How can we succeed in superhero performance as a human?
After discussing what types of skills are of great significance in software testing activities, finally we will discuss the key approach to achieve a good performance.
Main headlines of the scope are:
- Technical Skills
- Stress Management
- Critical Thinking
- Orchestration
- Agility
- Communication
- Self Improvement
- Efficiency
- Sharing
Takeaways
Sometimes testing is underestimated and the responsibility is not understood well. To be able to survive in the next generation testing positions, we as testers have to hold both technical and social skills. After the talk, Attendees will see:
- A summarized set of soft skills, collected from real life scenarios.
- Ways to be prepared for the future.
- Channels to share their knowledge and collect other people’s experiences.