Quality Quotient of a Tester: 22 Core Strengths to Be a Good Tester

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#18) Maintain Accuracy:

Maintaining ‘thoroughness, accuracy and precision’ in everything that they do is an important character of a Tester.

Unless they possess this character, the Total Quality of a product cannot be ensured and any posh work will never complete the testing and cannot ensure the total quality. Attention to minute details and not neglecting anything is quite important. It is like a school exam, and we do not know what question will come and from where.

Similarly, we do not know from which part the software bugs will come from if we leave it untested.

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#19) Collaboration Culture:

‘Collaboration culture’ is the key buzzword of DevOps.

With the advent of DevOps coming on to the mainstream usage, collaboration with all the stakeholders, especially for a Tester is utmost important in order to keep up themselves on top of the information and the updates. Collaboration helps the Testers to keep themselves on the same page with the other stakeholders in a program.

Collaboration also helps in prioritizing the testing activities and test scenarios based on the interactions, discussions that a Tester would have with the other stakeholders and helps in reducing the testing cost and thereby improving the quality.

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#20) Active Listener:

Another important criteria for anyone to be a good Tester is to be a ‘good listener’.

As a Tester, one needs to listen carefully and interpret correctly by listening to others. They need to gather a lot of ideas and knowledge about the product and how it is going to be used in the real-time by simply listening to others.

A tester needs to understand the real problem of the customer, which are implicit and a customer may be finding it difficult to convert it into the project requirements and document them. So, a Tester should be able to read the customer’s mind and understand them thoroughly by listening to them.

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#21) Clear Understanding of Responsibilities:

When there is a crucial release and if the test team has been asked to come on the weekend to carry out the final round of testing and everyone has agreed to come. Then accordingly, work allocation is done among them.

Imagine suddenly if someone among the one who has agreed to come either delays in starting the work or does not turn up and does not even inform that they cannot come?? Think of the impact of the situation. Schedule along with quality is in a big question mark.

So, as a Tester one should have the clear ‘responsibility for their work and timeliness’ and needs to understand the dependency on them. They need to keep in mind that their work is at the end of the release and stretching it will affect the entire project schedule.

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#22) Customer Centric:

Last but priority wise first, is the ‘commitment that a Tester should have towards the customer’ and their interest.

It is always very much important for a Tester to keep the customer in mind and focus towards them during their entire journey of the software delivery. ‘Customer experience’ and ‘customer satisfaction’ should be the key thinking that should always ring in the Testers mind.

Only this thinking and making no compromise on this thinking will make the product a successful one.

In situations where any compromise has to be made due to any unavoidable circumstance, then it is the responsibility of the Tester to contact the customer, inform them clearly and take their consent on the compromise that is happening.

A tester needs to know, what makes the customer happy and what makes them annoyed. They should clearly understand what their business targets are and where to focus upon in achieving them.

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Conclusion

These are the characteristics that become the yardstick for a Tester to be a good Tester and in turn, helps a lot in determining the ‘Quality Quotient’ of a Tester.

With the introduction of Agile and DevOps coming into the mainstream along with the changing roles and responsibilities of a Tester, both the ‘Testers’ and the entire task of Testing itself has been put under scrutiny.

A Tester, along with the responsibility of testing owns various other responsibilities and wears multiple hats and handles multiple roles in a project as a negotiator, problem solver, advisor, decision maker, as an end user, and as a customer as well.

Hence, now it is very clear that Software testing is not just finding the defects but thinking beyond the requirements and hence, whatever qualities one should possess to be a good Tester depend on the ‘core values’ of the Testers even beyond the technical skills that they possess.

If one does not have these core skills/key strengths or ‘Quality Quotient’ within them, then whatever external training or certifications they add to their kitty will not take them anywhere.

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About the Author:

This tutorial is an excellent contribution by our STH team member Gayathri S. She is a core ‘Software Tester’ by her profession from the period of introduction of separate Software Testing role in the IT Industry. She is very passionate about testing and in her words, ‘when I started Testing profession, I never knew that Tester should possess all these ‘core skills’ to be a good Tester and luckily over a period of time, with the attitude of constant learning, the profession has transformed me into a ‘Strong Tester’ by increasing my Quality Quotient.

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