To become a top tester, you need three critical skills often overlooked in traditional training. These skills are simple to understand and easy to adopt, but they have made a huge difference in my career and will help take yours to the next level. They also have nothing to do with software testing.
Yes, testers must have a solid understanding of testing methodologies, tools, and programming languages. However, the ability to communicate, collaborate, and think critically is equally important, often overlooked, and rarely taught.
By honing these three essential skills, you will significantly enhance your effectiveness and contribute to the overall success of every software project you work on. You will also make a positive impression on the people you deal with, stand out from your colleagues, and set yourself up for success.
This insight highlights three soft skills every software tester should cultivate, how to improve them, and how the right tools can make them easier to achieve.
1. Communication Skills
Communication sits at the core of software testing. After all, what use is a test report that nobody can understand?
Unfortunately, testers often cram too much information into reports, provide too much detail when asked for a quick update, or do not understand their audience’s needs.
As a case in point, I remember a particular occasion early in my career… I was a junior employee, desperate to impress, and had been given the opportunity to put together a project report for the main project sponsor.
I spent ages working on this report to make it absolutely perfect. I stayed up late, crammed in as many stats as possible, and gave a thorough breakdown of results and an in-depth analysis of planned versus actual progress.
I confidently presented it to the project director, expecting nothing but praise. He took one look at it and told me that, while this may well be the most brilliant report ever written, it was far too long and far too complicated. He didn’t have the time to read it and was highly unlikely even to understand it.
He asked me to produce a one-page overview with traffic light colours to highlight the criticality of the issues.
Tips for Improving Communication Skills:
Successful testers must articulate their findings clearly and concisely to developers and team members. This includes writing effective reports, providing constructive feedback, and contributing to meetings.
- Use active listening to understand the perspectives of others.
- Keep things simple with clear and straightforward language in documentation and reports. Don’t just give them the results, tell them what it means.
- Put yourself in their shoes and give the audience the information they need.
Effective test management tools can further enhance communication by:
- Enforcing standard templates for bug reports, ensuring all necessary information is captured.
- Providing real-time status updates that inform all team members of testing progress.
- Enabling comment threads and discussions directly linked to specific tests or issues, promoting contextual communication.
2. Collaboration and Teamwork
Software testing is never a solo endeavour. Successful testers work closely with developers, product managers, designers, and DBAs… the list is almost endless.
Unfortunately, testers are usually the bearers of bad news—telling a dev that their coding doesn’t work correctly, telling project managers they can’t go live, or telling an IT director their expensive kit won’t scale to the desired load.
On more than one occasion, I have seen testers and developers in full-blown arguments before the entire project team. Things can be especially spicy during performance testing, as many more areas of IT are involved, and preexisting inter-team rivalries may well flare up.
Needless to say, when software development becomes little more than a combat sport, you know something has gone seriously wrong.
However, it is entirely avoidable with effective collaboration and teamwork. Learning how to de-escalate potentially incendiary meetings is priceless.
Tips for Enhancing Collaboration:
It’s often easier said than done, but you must adopt a collaborative mindset. You can foster this with a concerted effort to understand the bigger picture and broader team perspectives.
This approach will encourage knowledge sharing and create a more cohesive team environment. This, in turn, helps you identify issues early in the development cycle and ensure that the final product meets user expectations.
- Participate in cross-functional team activities and brainstorming sessions.
- Be open to feedback and willing to adapt your approach based on team input.
- If meeting the team for the first time, take doughnuts or biscuits; this has accelerated teamwork for me on many occasions.
Modern testing tools promote teamwork by:
- Allowing shared test plans and test case libraries for collective learning.
- Integrating with version control systems and CI/CD pipelines to foster closer collaboration with developers.
- Offering task assignment and tracking features that help distribute work evenly and highlight areas where team members can support each other.
3. Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
Enterprise software development usually involves fragmented teams solving brand-new challenges in unique circumstances. Successful testers have to make sense of this and try to catch defects as early as possible.
As testers, we have a unique view of software development projects. We speak to every team, attend most meetings, and often act as project management’s eyes and ears—our reports are the best way to assess how a project is really going.
Because of this, we are ideally placed to spot those fundamental problems that other teams are too isolated to identify. By applying critical thinking and a problem-solving mindset, we can look at projects from different angles. At the very least, this allows us to conduct more thorough testing in areas where we have concerns, and ultimately, this will lead to a higher-quality product delivered in less time.
Tips for Developing Critical Thinking:
Successful testers should be able to understand and digest complex systems, at least at a high level. You don’t have to know every detail but try not to work in a silo. Seeing how everything fits together will give you an appreciation of where things can go wrong or when something doesn’t feel right.
- Engage in exercises that challenge your analytical skills, such as puzzles or logic games.
- Review past testing scenarios to identify what worked and what didn’t.
- Encourage brainstorming sessions to explore multiple solutions to a single problem.
Testing tools can augment a tester’s critical thinking skills by:
- Offering analytics and reporting features that help identify patterns and trends in testing data.
- Providing AI-powered suggestions for test coverage, helping testers consider scenarios they might have overlooked.
- Enabling easy creation and management of complex test scenarios, allowing testers to focus on strategy rather than execution details.
Soft Skills Are Key For Effective Software Testing
In this insight, we’ve explored three essential skills that will transform an average software tester into a top performer: communication, collaboration, and critical thinking.
These often-overlooked soft skills are crucial for success in the modern testing landscape, especially in remote and hybrid work environments.
Effective communication ensures that your test reports and findings are understood and acted upon. It involves tailoring your message to your audience, actively listening, and delivering clear, concise information.
Collaboration and teamwork are vital in the interconnected world of software development. Fostering a collaborative mindset, participating in cross-functional activities, and being open to feedback will improve team dynamics and project outcomes.
Critical thinking and problem-solving skills allow testers to identify potential issues early, analyse complex systems, and contribute valuable insights to the development process. By honing these skills, you can elevate your role from merely finding bugs to becoming a strategic asset in software quality assurance.
By mastering these three skills, you’ll improve your effectiveness as a tester, stand out among your peers, and set yourself up for career success.
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