Myths Breaker
Trust to facts!
There are several widespread myths about QA Engineer’s job. Let’s try to understand them:
MYTH 1: Software testing is lower than development
Most organizations consider software testing as a separate professional subject.
Software Testing not just makes the defect reporting process objective and transparent, but also improves the very business technique. Software testing has undergone enormous changes because of the focus in technology, methodology, and which is more important in business dynamics.
Looking at the world tendencies in the software testing sphere, we can see that the marketing possibility for the Indian offshore testing companies is vast. At present, the Indian software testing industry keeps almost 50% of all outsourced testing market. The Indian market requires approximately 35,000 workers to fill the gap, which will keep on increasing to about 1,65,000 in the year 2013 as per IDC Projections.
Having fixed improvement of testing frameworks and solution accelerators, the Indian software industry is all aimed to making stronger its position as a leading high-end testing services provider. Not only high quality software testing services are provided, but also good quality testing solutions can be made. From the projects which started with 3 to 5 test engineers, now we have big teams supporting complicated testing projects as a part of their COEs (Centres of Excellence). It clears out that there are lots of job opportunities in the testing field!
Who are all those people?
MYTH 2: A tester plays an unimportant role in the industry
Not only software professionals but also professionals of other industry domains can choose it as a job option, software testing is not limited to conducting testing but involves the whole process of development and quality norms.
Following the agile rule of early involvement, a software tester is expected to be a part of a project inception. Testing activity begins right from the demands - a definition stage. Nowadays, in many companies, test driven development is a norm. This enhanced attention on quality has significantly increased the scope of testing activity. Testing has become a successful job option for software engineers. Actually, a fresher or someone with 2-3 years of experience may finally consider testing the quickest way to achieve a domain expertise. Today, testing is compared with other IT services on the basis of revenue for companies.
Separately from a cool career which supposes growth and money; you can have different opportunities to work on a wide range of domains and technologies. Software testing specialists have many interesting offers today to create their career path based on individual likes. If you are good at a definite kind of testing, you can develop as a test architect; focusing on technical testing. Otherwise, you can specialize in a domain and become a functional expert. You also have the opportunity to get into ground-breaking fields such as professional games testing and mobile device testing.
A fresher who starts the career as a test engineer, can choose the testing line or move towards the quality confidence line where he can become a QA leader and then QA manager. A usual career path for a professional tester would go as a junior test engineer, test engineer, test analyst, test leader, QA manager, followed by program manager/COE head.
MYTH 3: Software Testing specialists don't get involved in high quality and challenging work
Software testing is a job that is most effective and profitable when it shifts from being reactive to being proactive. That’s why we may conclude that software testers are professional investigators. Being a test engineer, you play a significant role in ensuring the final software outcome or product coinsides with the expected quality standards (and the success or failure of the product greatly depends upon its quality).
So a tester needs to have extremely good Communication skills, Technical skills, Leadership qualities and Analytical / Judgement skills. They must grow out of the box and critical thinking, be creative and move to excellence. They should be able to communicate well with a different group of people both with confidence and passion on the topic. Technical skills will have to be added with good domain knowledge. This includes the ability to write code, understand systems and application architecture well, and the knowledge of databases.
There exist lots of open source testing tools (for test automation, performance testing, data validation, etc.). Becoming aware of these tools and their basics is compulsory, because sooner or later you will need to use them. Understanding notions like TDD, Agile testing, Risk & Model based testing, Customer experience testing, Security testing, Performance testing and Performance fine tuning, etc. is crucial. Improving basic awareness of the main activities in domains like Banking, Financial Services, Insurance and Telecom, among others, can give you an opportunity to increase test effectiveness. That’s why it is significant to take exams and get certified in these domains as well.
So if you are a critical thinker, an investigator, have a good technical background, and able to communicate and connect with people, then a career of a Software Testing Professional is right for you!
