Computer student usually have a great technical background, they are curious to learn many programming languages, electronic, scripting, data science, artificial intelligence..

In their universities, they used to make at least 2 or 3 programming projects part of their courses ..

It’s surprising that many of those students aren’t aware about software testing and some time they can even make wrong assumptions about testing as a career.

Wrong assumptions about software testing

Software testing is a world that’s not always understood by those who are outside the field, even those in the field can make some misconceptions about it. Noting that all those mistakes could lead to miscommunication, blame, and resentment.

Checkout Ten Misconceptions About Software Testing – That Non-Testers Share.

How universities could #MakeATester ?

I recently discovered the “MakeATester” launched by Simon Prior.

In his talk “If the Universities Won’t Help us, How do we #MakeATester?“

He summarized the different skills that could make a tester.

Skills that could #MakeATester

All those skills are important to be a good tester.

Neverless, programming skills are great to have but they are not mandatory as they could be taught especially in junior roles.

It’s nice having people with the right soft skills and the right mindset rather than somebody having years of programming experience. But it’s always a useful skill to have and we shouldn’t fly away from skilled ones with technical programming skills.

Other skills, such as curiosity, empathy, the ability to resolve conflicts, enthusiasm, having critical mindset always asking questions, communicate well orally or in written way, collaboration and team work, also a tester should have the ability to push staff to the limit,

But Nothing could be done without knowing the business domain of the project and the company we are working for.

TOP 5 Skills That could Make A Good Tester

Let’s now focus on top 5 that could make a good tester with student background whether computer science or other.

#5 Coaching and facilitating

This is a very useful skill teaching the testing mindset to the whole team. IT’s even mentioned in the modern testing principles where Testers teach and coach developers how to test their code. Testers shouldn’t be the only ones who test the software

Also, QA engineers or testers can end up being good scrum masters to their teams because of their tester mindset they have an end to end overview toward the system they are testing.

#4 Continuous Learning

This is something that I consider crucial for any tester. Indeed, this skill is very important for any engineering role.

Everyday there is a chance to learn new things

And Working with people always gives opportunity to learn and share what you’ve learnt.

IT helps them grow and they develop new skills while using new technologies.

Continuous learning means improving yourself on daily basis and making better version of yourself for better tomorrow

#3 Problem Solving and Analytical Thinking

Every piece of software is a new problem to solve. Testing is a problem solving activity. Check whether you’ve done enough testing to mitigate the risks.

It also brings the analytical thinking as well, every involved tester will be involved and analyse in a different way, it’s not wrong but it gives the concept that others will see things differently. Being an active listener could help as well.

#2 Good communications skills

Communication considered as one of the most important skills, fortunately, when working with people there is always an opportunity to communicate.

But having the technical knowledge without the ability to communicate well is a BIG problem.

Communication could be formal or informal, written, verbal, peer-to-peer, to-supervisor, to-manager, and every other possible combination. A good tester needs to be able to decide how formally to communicate, who to communicate to, and what data to communicate.

This skill is in most cases a proxy for the ability to decide what needs to be tested and the ability to communicate test results in an easy manner so that non-testers could understand it too.

#1 Curiosity and Asking questions

It’s a very crucial skill as a tester. You need to be able to ask the right question whether it’s asking your team for a better understanding your tasks or about the system you are testing.

They could be about requirements, design, even in initial phases, your questions could help shape the direction of the project.

References

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