How do I know if I can be a good software tester? [closed]

Question

I am a developer looking for a QA role. I know that the mindset of a developer and a tester differ fundamentally. Besides hands-on experience in a QA environment, are there any other ways to determine if I have what it takes to become a skilled tester?

Answer 1

Best way to determine if you are a good tester:

1) Are you methodical. Can you repeat the same steps every time with slight differences to exercise different logic paths.

2) Are you extremely anal-retentive.

Either of those is good, both are great.

Answer 2

To extend on GWLlosa's excellent response.

1 Patience

You must possess an almost infinite patience, because much of what you will be doing is incredibly frustrating (as it is broken) and also incredibly boring. Presuming the applications has options and states, you will be doing largely the same sequence of events over and over.

2 Thorough

One of the things about developers is that they commonly (hopefully) test their own stuff before they check it in. In most cases, this means that the application probably works in the (or a) normal case. However, that is typically on the developers machine, and they usually use the same test case over and over. It is your job to test for a wild variety of perfectly normal seeming test cases, and then test all the edge cases, and then test all the unacceptable cases. Then, if the application has different states, you might need to check all those things again with a seemingly unrelated difference (I.E. changed the colour scheme on your calculator, and now the "+" button does not work).

3 Organized

You must be able to take notes about your every movement. There is nothing more frustrating than having someone report a bug and have no idea how it happened or how to reproduce it. Reproducible problems are 1000x easier to solve, because they can be traced through. Complicated applications, with many interweaving states and screens make it very difficult to fix obscure bugs unless the programmers know how to generate the error in the first place.

4 Creativity/Empathy

Programmers are generally power-users. Both of computers in general, and of their program specifically. They know that the file functions are generally under the file menu, and that buttons need only to be pushed once, and then you wait. Users do not know these things. It is not your job to assume Users are stupid, because they are not, but they don't have the training you have. So you need to be able to understand what they are thinking, and then click a button 100 times as fast as possible. In a lot of applications, this will generate 100 results, which is typically BAD.

I knew of an application where the instructions were to push 'Shift-Enter' and I pressed L-Shift instead of R-Shift. It blew up. The regular users would be typing one handed, so they would 99.9% be using L-Shift, it didn't occur to anyone to bind the other shift as well. That is why you need Creativity as well. You need to be able to fit yourself into a few different roles, and ask yourself how they will be using the software. Then overuse every part of that use case.

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Ultimately those are just some of the skills required. But as you've noticed, these are all skills which are good to have anyway, so cultivating them is never a bad thing.

Cheers.

Answer 3

I think that devinb gives an excellent answer about some skills/qualities that tend to make good testers. Another I'd add is:

Strong Communication

A tester is often translating between non-technical desires from stakeholders, and technical implementation details from coders. Being able to translate in both directions is very handy. Similarly, the main product that testers produce is test reports (both bugs and broader, often both written and verbal). Being able to effectively communicate what the (multiple) consumers of our reports need to hear is key to being effective. This includes both clarity and a helpful/non-judgmental tone so as to foster a collaborative relationship.

Ways To Determine

Looking at your question "are there any other ways to determine if I have what it takes to become a skilled tester?" with an testing mindset, I notice that most of our answers have addressed the "what it takes to become a skilled tester" portion of your question. I want to also spent a minute on "ways to determine".

1. Informational interviews with testers you respect (or at companies you respect). This can allow you to ask more specific questions -- with follow-up -- and give you answers focussed on particular contexts that interest you. (Much of what devinb stated above is generally applicable, but testing commercial web apps v. embedded, life-critical software v. video games -- all will give you different answers.
2. Test open source software. I'm always amazed how few folks trying to break into testing do this. It will help you understand more about what testing is, and build a portfolio of public bug reports that you can link to. Choose whatever OS project in active development that you fancy, and dive in!
3. Study testing There are great books, blogs, and courses out there. Different testers will point you toward different ones, but in my opinion the writings of Cem Kaner & James Bach (books or blogs) are a great start. In terms of coursework, annual membership in the Association for Software Testing gives one free access to the Black Box Software Testing series, an amazing set of high-quality, instructor led courses, designed by Kaner & colleagues.

Best of luck to you!

Answer 4

You can try testing an open-source project: they come at all stages of development (mature or not), and should also have specs. That'd give you a chance to work on a real project with real developers, testers, bug tracking system, etc.