Soft-skills successful tester
When interviewing before hiring, it is fairly easy to determine the candidate’s so-called hard-skills. However, I have not seen the research on what kind of soft-skills a successful tester needs. While it’s quite simple to list some of them, as well as checking their level of knowledge in an interview.
For example:
A successful tester doesn’t just feel free to ask questions. The questions asked by the tester should be designed to obtain adequate information, namely, any of:
a) clarification of incomprehensible terms in the documentation
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b) clarification of implicitly prescribed system operation logic
c) clarification whether the observed behavior of the system is a bug, feature or minor inaccuracy, which can be ignored
d) clarification whether a previously detected inadequate behavior of the system was described somewhere (is there a defect in this regard, or a task for correction, or is it noted in the technical documentation as permissible behavior)
e) clarification, with whom specifically it is possible to solve the question that appeared to the tester
e) clarification of exactly who is responsible for solving the problem and how to transfer the relevant information to these persons, and what information should be given to them.
Among other things, when asking a question, the tester should do it in such a way that the respondent has a desire to answer the question, which means it must be polite and the information in the question that the tester on the given topic managed to find on his own.
All these skills are fairly easy to determine in an interview if you simply ask yourself to check what a given candidate is specifically capable of in asking questions.
This skill includes the ability, for example, to write a competent title to the text of the defect. To teach this skill it is enough to apply the method developed in journalism: the introductory information should contain answers to the basic questions "who, what does, where" Journalists can answer more questions by writing out the headlines and headliners, but for a successful tester to write a headline, it’s enough to adequately answer these three.
Further, a successful tester should be able to correctly describe inadequate system behavior. To do this, the description text must contain information of at least this kind:
a) a description of the area in which the inadequate behavior of the system manifests itself (including information about the system’s environment)
b) step by step instructions on how to achieve the inadequate behavior of the system described in the title
c) an explanation of how exactly the resulting behavior of the system differs from the expected behavior of the system
d) all necessary logs, screenshots and other additional information should be attached, which will help the developer to establish more precisely what particular area of his code is associated with the identified inadequate behavior. The difficulty is that not in all cases, these logs are necessary.
It is also quite simple to check this skill for an interview: you can just ask the candidate to write a typical, in his opinion, error message. All the skills of the candidate will vividly manifest in what exactly he will write.
On long-term and complex projects, the testing team can completely change several times during the whole period of product development. Test cases, in fact, important information about the course of product testing, useful not only for the author, but also for beginners. Clear and simple test cases make it easy to introduce a newbie up to date: it’s enough to give him a set of test cases and access to a more or less stable version of the system, and, driving these test cases, the tester can smoothly and efficiently merge into team work.
Accordingly, it is very important that test cases are written in simple, understandable language and contain all the necessary information so that a person who is not familiar with the product under test and his environment at all can perform it, or at least that a newcomer needs to perform a test case. It was only a few questions to ask more experienced comrades.
The ability to write such test cases is also quite easy to check for interviews using a simple task.
In fact, for different test systems, different ways of ranking defects by importance are relevant. Different projects have different levels of assessment of the importance of the defect, sometimes there is not one ranking scale, but two. The main question here is whether the tester understands the fundamental difference between a blocking defect from just an important one and, for example, both of them from an insignificant one, and whether he can, by asking the necessary questions for this, clarify for himself how defects are ranked on this particular project. .
A tester who does not possess such a skill at best pushes more experienced comrades with questions of what importance to put a defect, at worst, will begin to put importance on the “from bald” principle, which will cause a considerable amount of unnecessary conflicts in the project team.
The ability to rank defects is also quite easily detected at an interview, it is enough to ask a few simple questions to the candidate.
This is a basic property that any tester needs. A tester without curiosity will not be able to adequately test any system. At best, he will perform well on other test cases written by someone else and create defects that anyone could identify in his place. Such a tester - not having curiosity - may be useful on a project if he has discipline and performance, but he will never become a “star”.
It is easy to understand whether a person has this property of personality, simply by observing his behavior at an interview - specifically, by observing what questions a person asks during the interview and whether he asks questions at all.
I think there is no need to go into the details of what this word means. Test cases should be written on time, defects should be completed immediately after detection, defects should be rechecked as soon as the corresponding patch hit the test bench, etc, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to find out in the course of an interview whether a candidate has a similar quality, but people who do not possess them are usually clearly visible by starting to talk about how cleverly they were able to evade a mandatory action in the past. project.
Enumerating useful soft-skills of a tester, if desired, can be endless, but the six above-described qualities, the absence of which will bring a lot of headaches, we can call this position conditionally, the project testing manager during the project, in fact.
I wish you all successful interviews for the role of a tester and a successful finding of highly qualified people for the same role. Thank you for your attention to this article.
For example:
1. The ability to ask questions
A successful tester doesn’t just feel free to ask questions. The questions asked by the tester should be designed to obtain adequate information, namely, any of:
a) clarification of incomprehensible terms in the documentation
')
b) clarification of implicitly prescribed system operation logic
c) clarification whether the observed behavior of the system is a bug, feature or minor inaccuracy, which can be ignored
d) clarification whether a previously detected inadequate behavior of the system was described somewhere (is there a defect in this regard, or a task for correction, or is it noted in the technical documentation as permissible behavior)
e) clarification, with whom specifically it is possible to solve the question that appeared to the tester
e) clarification of exactly who is responsible for solving the problem and how to transfer the relevant information to these persons, and what information should be given to them.
Among other things, when asking a question, the tester should do it in such a way that the respondent has a desire to answer the question, which means it must be polite and the information in the question that the tester on the given topic managed to find on his own.
All these skills are fairly easy to determine in an interview if you simply ask yourself to check what a given candidate is specifically capable of in asking questions.
2. The ability to adequately describe the problems found, inadequate behavior of the system or, simply, bugs
This skill includes the ability, for example, to write a competent title to the text of the defect. To teach this skill it is enough to apply the method developed in journalism: the introductory information should contain answers to the basic questions "who, what does, where" Journalists can answer more questions by writing out the headlines and headliners, but for a successful tester to write a headline, it’s enough to adequately answer these three.
Further, a successful tester should be able to correctly describe inadequate system behavior. To do this, the description text must contain information of at least this kind:
a) a description of the area in which the inadequate behavior of the system manifests itself (including information about the system’s environment)
b) step by step instructions on how to achieve the inadequate behavior of the system described in the title
c) an explanation of how exactly the resulting behavior of the system differs from the expected behavior of the system
d) all necessary logs, screenshots and other additional information should be attached, which will help the developer to establish more precisely what particular area of his code is associated with the identified inadequate behavior. The difficulty is that not in all cases, these logs are necessary.
It is also quite simple to check this skill for an interview: you can just ask the candidate to write a typical, in his opinion, error message. All the skills of the candidate will vividly manifest in what exactly he will write.
3. The ability to write algorithmically simple test cases
On long-term and complex projects, the testing team can completely change several times during the whole period of product development. Test cases, in fact, important information about the course of product testing, useful not only for the author, but also for beginners. Clear and simple test cases make it easy to introduce a newbie up to date: it’s enough to give him a set of test cases and access to a more or less stable version of the system, and, driving these test cases, the tester can smoothly and efficiently merge into team work.
Accordingly, it is very important that test cases are written in simple, understandable language and contain all the necessary information so that a person who is not familiar with the product under test and his environment at all can perform it, or at least that a newcomer needs to perform a test case. It was only a few questions to ask more experienced comrades.
The ability to write such test cases is also quite easy to check for interviews using a simple task.
4. Ability to rank defects by importance
In fact, for different test systems, different ways of ranking defects by importance are relevant. Different projects have different levels of assessment of the importance of the defect, sometimes there is not one ranking scale, but two. The main question here is whether the tester understands the fundamental difference between a blocking defect from just an important one and, for example, both of them from an insignificant one, and whether he can, by asking the necessary questions for this, clarify for himself how defects are ranked on this particular project. .
A tester who does not possess such a skill at best pushes more experienced comrades with questions of what importance to put a defect, at worst, will begin to put importance on the “from bald” principle, which will cause a considerable amount of unnecessary conflicts in the project team.
The ability to rank defects is also quite easily detected at an interview, it is enough to ask a few simple questions to the candidate.
5. Curiosity
This is a basic property that any tester needs. A tester without curiosity will not be able to adequately test any system. At best, he will perform well on other test cases written by someone else and create defects that anyone could identify in his place. Such a tester - not having curiosity - may be useful on a project if he has discipline and performance, but he will never become a “star”.
It is easy to understand whether a person has this property of personality, simply by observing his behavior at an interview - specifically, by observing what questions a person asks during the interview and whether he asks questions at all.
6. Discipline
I think there is no need to go into the details of what this word means. Test cases should be written on time, defects should be completed immediately after detection, defects should be rechecked as soon as the corresponding patch hit the test bench, etc, etc, etc.
Unfortunately, I don’t know how to find out in the course of an interview whether a candidate has a similar quality, but people who do not possess them are usually clearly visible by starting to talk about how cleverly they were able to evade a mandatory action in the past. project.
Enumerating useful soft-skills of a tester, if desired, can be endless, but the six above-described qualities, the absence of which will bring a lot of headaches, we can call this position conditionally, the project testing manager during the project, in fact.
I wish you all successful interviews for the role of a tester and a successful finding of highly qualified people for the same role. Thank you for your attention to this article.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/434794/
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