Professional Tester
Last week, a student asked me: “Is testing an entry level job or is it a professional job? Is there a career as software tester?”
My answer: Absolutely yes, there is a career for professional tester. Although many software people start their careers as testers then move on to other positions, there are people who build their careers in testing as professional testers and they are earning a lot of money too. To start, they must have good technical skills and understand the range of applications and technologies in use. That is why programming skills and software development knowledge are fundamentals of any testing position. The next step is to develop the business skills or domain area. Professional testers understand how users use the products, how the business works as seen from different roles, and the risk associated with the products and services. These skills require many years of experiences and intimate knowledge of the business. Besides that, professional testers must also know testing methods, testing tools, testing processes, testing frameworks as they continue to improve their skills.
The above skill areas are “hard” skills as compared to “soft” or personal skills. Professional testers must develop all kinds soft skills. They must know how to communicate well with both the development team and the users. They must know when to be flexible and when to be stern as quality and risks are important to the business. They must also know that some situations require results orientation and some situations require attention to all details.
Professional testers can moving up to Test Manager where they manage all testing activities and coordinate tasks among testers. To work as a Test Manager, you need some of the “hard skills” mentioned above, some “soft skills” and a good training in project management. Test management has a lot of similarities to project management because they both require planning. coordinating and monitoring. In agile projects, a Test Manager can be a Scrum Master but for larger projects, the Test Manager must work with the Project Manager to plan project activities, review project progress and recognize the best testing framework applicable to the project.
A professional tester know how to think their way around a system and look for all the ways that things can go wrong. They have to come up with a test plan, test cases, test scripts and test tools that can verify that those things have not gone wrong. Basically, testing is “questioning a software product in order to evaluate it”. Testing is a service to the project, where testers help to discover defects, risks and problems that threaten the value of the product and the goals of the business. This is the difference between a professional testers and a programmer who only code and test their works. Many programmers think testing is easy, an entry level job or second-class role because they do NOT distinguish between testing code from testing for value or testing for risks. They believe testing is all about checking a coded program for defects, just like what they do in Unit tests. Anyone who work long enough in the software industry know how to value testers. First, they do NOT consider testing as a programming exercise, but a problem-solving task in which special tools or code can be developed. Solving problem by coding a test case is the most challenging part of a project which is much more difficult than just simply coding a function (A simple exercise of logic using a programming language).
A professional tester NOT just know about programming but is the best programmer. Besides that, they also have the special mindset of finding defects as well as risks as they know how to test and do it well. Testing is more than coding up a set of checks but also help others to recognize what testing can do, by offering advises, challenges, and leadership. Testers know how to provide information about products and projects to managers and users. They are professional because they are passionate about their skills and practice it with integrity, honesty recognizing that their contributions to quality, reducing risk and cost, increasing business value and reputation is central part of their jobs.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
