As a testing professional it is very important that you acquire all the important and must have individual skills for testing to progress and perform better in your role.
Individual skills can be obtained through the experience or by education and training. Any of the following can contribute to your knowledge.
• Knowledge of business or domain.
• Experience of software systems.
• Experience of software development process including Analysis, Development and Technical Support.
• Experience of software testing activities.
Testing skills grow through the combination of work experience and training, it has to be the balance of both. If you try to acquire all the skills just by work experience or only by training, it won’t be efficient. The ideal way is to have the mix of both practical work experience and targeted training.
In short we can classify individual skills of testers into three main categories.
- Software Testing Skills – Knowledge of software testing concepts and how to apply them effectively in real time problems.
- Technical and Software Skills – This includes knowledge of development process including Analysis, Development, Technical Support. Tester should be aware of the different technology involved in developing, deploying and maintaining the software.
- Business and Domain Skills – Tester should be aware of the domain or business for which software is supposed to solve the problem, In other words, tester should have understanding of the problem that the software system must solve.
Lets go through each of these skills one by one in future posts.
