2015
Why to choose Testing as a career
Software testing is a booming profession that offers a rewarding and structured career path with clearly defined roles and qualifications. Highly recognized international testing accreditation include ISTQB and CAT, with many other practical courses also being available for a niche skill set.
As an entry level Tester, you will primarily be performing test execution and acquiring niche skills to ensure systems meet performance standards required by the business and end-user.
Progressing to Test Analyst and then on to Senior Test Analyst, you will work on more complex scenarios, become involved in requirements analysis and test case design as well as execution.
As a Test Analyst you will also be able to become involved in the specialist areas of Test Automation and Performance and as a Senior Test Analyst you’ll start taking responsibility for junior staff.
With further progression to Test Consultant / Manager, you gain responsibility for managing teams and strategy, aligning test projects with business objectives.
The career pathway covers a variety of test methods; unit testing, integration testing, system testing, acceptance testing, functional testing, non-functional and regression testing.
Why to choose Software Testing as a career:
- Software testing will always be a much needed profession.
There is always a need. Death, taxes and bugs in code! Testing is around 30% up to 40% of all software development efforts.
- No software testing…no software
Software testing does not make software, it makes software usable. Software is useless without testing
- Making a lot of people happy
You give information without getting political.
Well tested software leads to steady quality products that meet customer needs in a user-friendly manner-your customers and the sales staff will be happy, you live up to your marketing claims, delivering products to the sales channel and the customers timely, eliminating embarrassments.
- Saving company’s face and money
You detect bugs so that the customers don’t have to deal with them, when the customers have to deal with the bugs, it will cost your company a lot more i.e., reputation, money, time, etc.
- Software testing offers you opportunities to constantly be exposed with the latest and the greatest.
Software testing is a continued changing and learning discipline-you constantly have to keep up with new ways of doing testing to keep up with development methods, new platform technologies, new product innovations and new ways of how software products are used.
It gives you the exposure more than the software alone.
It has a business analysis component. To be a good tester you will have to learn about the business of the customers. And for each project that can be something different, from financial industry to oil companies, to cell phones, games, etc.
- Software testing is highly intellectually, analytically and creatively demanding.
Software testing offers you an opportunity to fully utilize your critical thinking and creativity to discover or see things that others do not see.
It can be interesting, and intellectually challenging.
You have to think out of the box- think of things and situations that others have overlooked. If those elusive bugs were easy to find, they probably wouldn’t be there.
It is less technological focused than software development, but it does not mean inferiority.
You don’t have to be a programming enthusiast to be a good software test engineer. But you have to have good analytical and creative skills, which you can also develop further in this profession.
- Software testing is a challenging and rewarding profession.
While software developers often work with one or more parts of the software but not in whole, software test engineers have opportunities to work with the product from end-to-end (the product is more than software), as well as at a very deep level of details.
To do testing well, it requires a good mix of software testing skills, IT technical skills, domain expertise, project management and communication skills.
Software testing requires a lot of communication and language skills (e.g., English if you work with an US-based development team).
The better communication language skills you possess, the higher you compensation will be.
Testing is the bridge from development to customers, user advocates, so you learn more about the business needs and customers.
Good testing is about business modelling, user analysis, understanding the market.
Also Read: Software Testing Myths
- You help people sleep better at night, The confidence they get.
Now a days, software is everywhere. When software testing is done well, it gives your company or clients confidence in the software-everyone can sleep better at night.
You provide the critical information for the entire team to have confidence in the product.
- Many can do it, but few can do it well.
There are still relatively few people specialized in software testing. In particular there are relatively few people who are excellent at it.
- Software testing is a well compensated profession with plenty of opportunity for fast-paced career progression.
It has been an under-studied discipline and an industry that still offers a lot of room to learn, pioneer and innovate.
Therefore, it offers plenty of opportunities to quickly advance in your career, be well compensated and/or become thought-leaders.
In software testing profession, there are many opportunities for growth. You can become senior engineer, project lead, project manager, line manager, director, etc.
- Are you already a tester?
- If you are inquisitive by nature who likes to scrutinize everything you come across and can plan ahead of time and quickly adapt in case plan doesn’t work out during execution. It means you should choose to be a tester. Just think how much fun it would be on the job, to play with different browsers, cool gadgets, different operating systems, smart phones, iPad and Tablets.
- Developing relationships with programmers, and business people developing acceptance criteria, discussing issues in business terms and how they will be effected.
- Getting to know and understand how a system works from end-to-end, and get to know its quirks and pitfalls. Finding bugs prevents them from being released into Production and causing someone else a great inconvenience.
- Get to understand code, database schema, servers and browsers. Involvement in automating acceptance test.
- Looking at software from all different angles: from a user’s point of view, from the business/marketing view, from a technical viewpoint.
If you can imagine yourself do all these things on the job and enjoying it, means you are meant to be a tester.
Who can become a Tester?
When you are switching from other fields to Testing you would definitely have to spend some time on acquiring the knowledge but there are a few skills professionals in the following fields already have which make it intuitive for them to move to testing.
Here, we are not claiming on who can and cannot switch to Software Testing.
At the end of day it is your interest, will and passion and dedication that dictate the terms and take you places.
Moving to Software Testing from:
- L1/L2/L3 Support
You have been an initial point of contact whenever customer found an issue and raised ticket. You need to understand the issue, discuss it with the customer to get clarification after analyzing the logs and check for the validity of steps leading unto the issue.
Create an internal defect report of the issue which clearly mentions the problem, steps to reproduce attaching all relevant logs, release number, build version in use, database schema version and patch level.
You also need to interact with the tester for issue reproduction and follow up with the developer to understand root cause and fix the plan.
All these are major part of Tester’s profile.
- Developer
Developer can be a very effective tester, since he has been part of the construction process means he knows the general tendencies of a developer and can directly attack the pain areas.
Since a developer has an advantage of being able to read the code, even in a new project with lack of proper documentation he can create a better understanding faster.
His programming skills can help him learn and use scripting and automation tools in no time. A developer can unfold race conditions using white box testing which otherwise is very difficult to reproduce.
- Business Analyst
Working as Business Analyst means you are half way there. You understand what customer want, help in translating though requirements as a testable requirements.
You are at ease in taking to customers. Interpersonal skills are really difficult to master however if you are doing it already means once you start your journey to be a tester you can reach your destination in no time.
Tester has to interact with different stakeholder at different stages of testing and in different scenarios, this should come naturally to you.
Being a good communicator will help you ask questions promptly and precisely and you’ll be able to challenge the assumptions. It is a much needed skill in a tester.
Tester must be able to put his points firmly and at times need to advocate bugs he has opened. All this should be easy for you.
- Subject Matter Expert
SMEs are go to guys for developers, testers and managers in case of any conflict and lack of understanding. They know the product inside-out.
They help in framing the requirements, they know the testability of requirement, they understand the underlying platform and about the database in use.
They have been handling issues and providing solutions, presentations on critical issues, guidelines for improvement. They know the business logic behind it.
They can easily get started with the testing role.
- Non-IT Field
If you want to start working in IT, Software Testing could possibly be the best way in, even if you want to get into development.
Reason being, for a team of developers there is usually one tester, which means all developers work on a specific module but tester has the understanding of end-to-end flow instead of specific areas.
He is needed to know it, how else can he test all modules interaction and end to end functionality.
This will help you improve your interpersonal skills, as you’ll find yourself in such situation more often than not.
You may refer to another post Skills of a Software Tester which explains technical and behavioral skills a Software Tester must acquire in order to be effective and successful.
We appreciate any feedback and encourage you to post any questions you might have related to starting your career as a Software Tester.
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