Top 5 must-have QA skills in 2021
“QA skills to understand what users expect, help the team to build what is necessary and ensure the Quality of the Product”
Communication and Team Player
Although soft skills are usually referred to as “additional requirements” in job listings they are as important as technical skills for quality assurance engineers because they define the approach towards the whole working process.
Since testers have to interact with business stakeholders, analysts, developers, administrators, and teams, which are sometimes remotely located it is vital to be able to establish effective communication and to be a team player.
Whether it is a bug to report, explanation of a blocking issue, or clarification on an ambiguous requirement QAs need to write and speak appropriately expressing their thoughts and ideas.
Looking for other people’s mistakes and bringing them to light is not easy to do. For instance, when you raise a bug you have to explain it diplomatically and politely so that the developer doesn’t feel like you are blaming him for the root cause.
To get things done in a reasonable time-frame, testers also need to be good negotiators dealing successfully with a bit of resistance at times.
Creative and Critical Mind
In the QA process, most of the time devoted to testing and finding bugs goes to understanding where those defects originated. In this case, a creative attitude will reduce significantly the time needed to source the underlying causes.
Additionally, this creativity requires knowledge, intuition, and involvement throughout the process, because it is important not only to understand the problem itself, but also the potential impact that it may have on the rest of the software.
Another important aspect of being a creative tester is to be able to think from the customer’s perspective. Real-time users prefer learning to use a new product by trying and seeing what happens rather than reading the manual. That’s why QA engineers have to tap into users' imagination and be able to plug into their heads and experience.
They have to consider how software can be misused and all sorts of possible issues that can be faced.
Be Curious and Eager to Learn
If you are not learning something every day, you are not testing’. Every new day brings a different challenge for QA engineers and to cope successfully with it they have to acquire the ability of learning while working.
What is more, they have to be able to find appropriate solutions and to apply them immediately in the testing process to improve the effectiveness and control over it.
Natural curiosity is another indispensable part of the testers’ mindset because it helps them to think out of the box and to find problems in areas where no one else can even think to look at.
Remember how, when you were a child, you used to take a new gadget to see how it works. To test a system effectively a similar approach is needed. If you want to discover the weaknesses of the software you have to break it first.
Technical Skills
Every QA engineer must know the following common fundamentals of testing.
- SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle)
- Agile methodology
- STLC (Software Test Life Cycle)
- Types of testing (Functional, Integration, System, Compatibility, Performance, etc.)
- Test plan
- Test Cases design techniques
- Test management tools
Automation testing -
- Selenium with Java or Python
- Performance testing with Jmeter or Load-runner
- Framework — TestNg, Robot
- Postman, SoapUI, and Rest Assured for API Testing
- Appium for mobile application testing.
Automation helps teams to test faster, substantially more code, improving the test accuracy so that QA engineers are free to focus on tests that require manual attention and their unique human skills.
Time Management and Prioritizing Skills
Understanding what needs to be done now and what can be delayed is a crucial trait that turns software testers into successful ones. Prioritizing enables one to work smarter, not harder, and simultaneously improves efficiency.
Finding the balance between importance and urgency, according to deadlines and goals, is a key part of a testing strategy. The first testing principle says that exhaustive testing is impossible which automatically means the whole process must be risk-driven.
Working simultaneously at people, process, activity, and communication levels makes the ability to prioritize a must for every QA.
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