1. Personal Requirements For Software Quality Assurance Engineers
Challenges
Rapidly changing requirements
Foresee defects that are likely to happen in production
Monitor and Improve the software development processes
Ensure that standards and procedures are being followed
Customer Satisfaction and confidence
Compete the Market
2. Professional Characteristics of a good SQA Engineer
Understanding of business approach and goals of the organization
Understanding of entire software development process
Strong desire for quality
Establish and enforce SQA methodologies, processes and Testing Strategies
Judgment skills to assess high-risk areas of application
Communication with Analysis and Development team
Report defects with full evidence
Take preventive actions
Take actions for Continuous improvement
Reports to higher management
Say No when Quality is insufficient
Work Management
Meet deadlines
Open Minded
Observant
Perceptive
Tenacious
Decisive
Diplomatic
Keen for further training/trends in QA
3. A good software tester should be Technology Hungry?
They hate dull, repetitive, work-they'll do it for a while if they have to, but not for long. The silliest thing for a human to do, in their mind, is to pound on a keyboard when they're surrounded by computers. They have a clear notion of how error-prone manual testing is, and in order to improve the quality of their own work, they'll find ways to eliminate all such error-prone procedures. Excellent testers re-invent the capture/playback tool many times. Dozens of home-brew test data generators. Excellent test design automation done with nothing more than a word processor, or earlier, with a copy machine and lots of bottles of white-out.
4. A good software tester should be Self-Sufficient and Tough?
If they need love, they don't expect to get it on the job. They can't be looking for the interaction between them and programmers as a source of ego-gratification and/or nurturing. Their ego is gratified by finding bugs, with few misgivings about the pain (in the programmers) that such finding might engender. In this respect, they must practice very tough love.
5. A good software tester should be Organized person?
Organized.
Can't imagine a scatter-brained tester. There's just too much to keep track of to trust to memory. Good testers use files, data bases, and all the other accouterments of an organized mind. They make up checklists to keep themselves on track. They recognize that they too can make mistakes, so they double-check their findings. They have the facts and figures to support their position. When they claim that there's a bug-believe it, because if the developers don't, the tester will flood them with well-organized, overwhelming, evidence.
A consequence of a well-organized mind is a facility for good written and oral communications. As a writer and editor, I've learned that the inability to express oneself clearly in writing is often symptomatic of a disorganized mind. I don't mean that we expect everyone to write deathless prose like a Hemingway or Melville. Good technical writing is well-organized, clear, and straightforward: and it doesn't depend on a 500,000 word vocabulary. True, there are some unfortunate individuals who express themselves superbly in writing but fall apart in an oral presentation- but they are typically a pathological exception. Usually, a well-organized mind results in clear (even if not inspired) writing and clear writing can usually be transformed through training into good oral presentation skills.
6. A good software tester should be People Skills?
People Skills.
Here's another area in which testers and programmers can differ. You can be an effective programmer even if you are hostile and anti-social; that won't work for a tester. Testers can take a lot of abuse from outraged programmers. A sense of humor and a thick skin will help the tester survive. Testers may have to be diplomatic when confronting a senior programmer with a fundamental goof. Diplomacy, tact, a ready smile-all work to the independent tester's advantage. This may explain one of the (good) reasons that there are so many women in testing. Women are generally acknowledged to have more highly developed people skills than comparable men-whether it is something innate on the X chromosome as some people contend or whether it is that without superior people skills women are unlikely to make it through engineering school and into an engineering career. The fact is there and those sharply-honed people skills are important.
7. A good software tester should be Hyper-Sensitivity to Little Things?
Hyper-Sensitivity to Little Things.
Good testers notice little things that others (including programmers) miss or ignore. Testers see symptoms, not bugs. We know that a given bug can have many different symptoms, ranging from innocuous to catastrophic. We know that the symptoms of a bug are arbitrarily related in severity to the cause. Consequently, there is no such thing as a minor symptom-because a symptom isn't a bug. It is only after the symptom is fully explained (i.e., fully debugged) that you have the right to say if the bug that caused that symptom is minor or major. Therefore, anything at all out of the ordinary is worth pursuing. The screen flickered this time, but not last time-a bug. The keyboard is a little sticky-another bug. The account balance is off by 0.01 cents-great bug. Good testers notice such little things and use them as an entree to finding a closely-related set of inputs that will cause a catastrophic failure and therefore get the programmers' attention. Luckily, this attribute can be learned through training.
8. A good software tester should Know the Application?
Know the Application.
That's the other side of the knowledge coin. The ideal tester has deep insights into how the users will exploit the program's features and the kinds of cockpit errors that users are likely to make. In some cases, it is virtually impossible, or at least impractical, for a tester to know both the application and programming. For example, to test an income tax package properly, you must know tax laws and accounting practices. Testing a blood analyzer requires knowledge of blood chemistry; testing an aircraft's flight control system requires control theory and systems engineering, and being a pilot doesn't hurt; testing a geological application demands geology. If the application has a depth of knowledge in it, then it is easier to train the application specialist into programming than to train the programmer into the application. Here again, paralleling the programmer's qualification, I'd like to see a university degree in the relevant discipline followed by a few years of working practice before coming into the test group.
9. How to Identifying Software Quality Assurance Personnel?
Requirement Specification
Functional Specification
Technical Specification
Standards document and user manuals - If applicable (e.g. Coding standards document)
Test Environment Setup
10. A good software tester should be Honest?
Testers are fundamentally honest and incorruptible. They'll compromise if they have to, but they'll righteously agonize over it. This fundamental honesty extends to a brutally realistic understanding of their own limitations as a human being. They accept the idea that they are no better and no worse, and therefore no less error-prone than their programming counterparts. So they apply the same kind of self-assessment procedures that good programmers will. They'll do test inspections just like programmers do code inspections. The greatest possible crime in a tester's eye is to fake test results.
