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Chapter: Software Testing : Test Management

Skills needed by a test specialist

Given the nature of technical and managerial responsibilities assigned to the tester that are listed in Section 8.0, many managerial and personal skills are necessary for success in the area of work.

Skills needed by a test specialist

 

Given the nature of technical and managerial responsibilities assigned to the tester that are listed in Section 8.0, many managerial and personal skills are necessary for success in the area of work. On the personal and managerial level a test specialist must have:

 

organizational, and planning skills;

 

the ability to keep track of, and pay attention to, details;

 

the determination to discover and solve problems;

the ability to work with others and be able to resolve conflicts;

 

the ability to mentor and train others;

 

the ability to work with users and clients;

 

strong written and oral communication skills;

 

the ability to work in a variety of environments;

the ability to think creatively

 

The first three skills are necessary because testing is detail and problem oriented. In addition, testing involves policymaking, a knowledge of different types of application areas, planning, and the ability to organize and monitor information, tasks, and people. Testing also requires inter actions with many other engineering professionals such as project managers, developers, analysts, process personal, and software quality assurance staff. Test professionals often interact with clients to prepare certain types of tests, for example acceptance tests. Testers also have to prepare test-related documents and make presentations. Training and mentoring of new hires to the testing group is also a part of the tester‘s job. In addition, test specialists must be creative, imaginative, and experimentoriented.

 

They need to be able to visualize the many ways that a software item should be tested, and make hypotheses about the different types of defects that could occur and the different ways the software could fail. On the technical level testers need to have:

 

                     an education that includes an understanding of general software engineering principles, practices, and methodologies;

 

strong coding skills and an understanding of code structure and behavior;

 

a good understanding of testing principles and practices;

a good understanding of basic testing strategies, methods, and techniques;

 

                     the ability and experience to plan, design, and execute test cases and test procedures on multiple levels (unit, integration, etc.);

 

a knowledge of process issues;

 

   knowledge of how networks, databases, and operating systems are organized and how they work;

a knowledge of configuration management;

 

a knowledge of test-related documents and the role each documents plays in the testing process;

 

the ability to define, collect, and analyze test-related measurements;

 

the ability, training, and motivation to work with testing tools and equipment;

a knowledge of quality issues.



In order to carry out testing tasks testers need to have knowledge of how requirements, specifications, and designs are developed and how different methodologies can be applied. They should understand how errors and defects are introduced into the software artifacts even at early stages of the life cycle. Testers should have strong programming backgrounds to help them visualize how code works, how it behaves, and the possible defects it could contain. They also need coding experience to support the development of the test harnesses which often involve a considerable coding effort in themselves.

 

Testers must have a knowledge of both white and black box techniques and methods and the ability to use them to design test cases. Organizations need to realize that this knowledge is a necessary prerequisite for tool use and test automation. Testers need to understand the need for multilevel tests and approaches used for testing at each level


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Software Testing : Test Management : Skills needed by a test specialist |


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