The Top 5 Secrets of the Best Software Testers

By Orest Tsitsila, 5 years of experience as QC Engineer at Waverley.

Do you think you are a good software testing specialist? You seem to know the theory pretty well and you are actively gaining practical experience.

Is it enough to read a couple books, pass a training course, master the terminology, or know how to use a particular bug-tracking system?

Was it easy for you to find your first or second job, transfer to another project, or move from one company to another?

I have 5 years of experience of working as a QC Engineer. During this period, I mastered many technologies, databases, frameworks, tools, as well as soft and hard skills. I’ve had the chance to work on very different teams — big and small, global and local, in-house and outsourced teams.

As I talked with my various colleagues and customers, I kept asking myself these questions:

What are the qualities of a good software testing specialist — the qualities which you can never find in job descriptions? Why do some people experience career growth, gain the trust of the customer, and the respect from colleagues, while the others spend years on boring, low-paid projects despite having solid technical expertise?

From my experience, I identified the top five personal qualities that make a good software testing specialist. Let’s discuss each of them in more detail.

1. Attention to detail (Sherlock)

Why? This is a pretty obvious one, but it’s often overlooked. Good logical thinking is key by all means, but lack of attention to detail commonly becomes a critical bottleneck in a tester’s productivity. To effectively process new information, for example, to read through and analyze project documentation, one must pay real attention to detail.

Long-term focusing on one task assists with getting into a flow state. This is a mental state when a person can work on a task for as long as possible without getting distracted. But there are different kinds of work: reading and comprehending complex works in English is an entirely different kind of work than, say, chopping wood. Each of these kinds of work requires different forms of mental focus, so you will need to be in the right mental state to appropriately handle the task at hand. Missing an important detail while testing for quality is highly possible — and yet absolutely unacceptable.

How? You can work on developing your ability to focus along two axes — by deepening your focus and by broadening it. To endure your ability to stay focused, you can try using the Focus To-Do: Pomodoro Timer & To-Do List app. The Pomodoro Technique is a well-known and efficient time-management approach aimed at reducing interruptions in focus and flow.

To train your attentiveness, you can also develop the breadth of your focus. And, as it often happens, the most efficient is also the simplest one! Here’s how it works: at the moment of “doing nothing”, try to take in as much information around you as possible: analyze what you hear and see, the way you sit, the air temperature in the room, the color of you and your colleagues’ clothes, etc. The main goal is to try to be in this state of hyper-focus for as long as possible. Everything you notice should be noted and analyzed afterwards. You can do this exercise anytime, anywhere.

Keep training your brain — it is powerful and you can make it work in many different ways. A good way to see if you’ve learned to pay attention to detail is to play games that help you train your brain’s focus. Apps such as Elevate or Lumosity might be worth trying.

Practice meditation. Meditation is proven to have a positive impact on your physical and emotional health. People who meditate regularly can concentrate better as well as be more attentive to detail and careful while working on projects.

Make your daily plan and note it down. Building a timetable for the day helps you stay productive and efficient at work and, at the same time, helps with being attentive to the details that matter. This also helps you free up time and effort which you can allocate to other tasks. Routine like this makes you spend a specific amount of time on a given task which results in you having a well-balanced day, with enough time to do everything in your plan while staying focused at the same time.

In my experience, exercising your ability to focus your attention on a daily basis can considerably improve your efficiency and reduce fatigue. Your brain will be trained to “automatically” pay attention to details and sort them out effortlessly.

2. The ability to identify patterns (Dr. House)

Why? Why does a sick person get a fever? There can be countless reasons. A good testing specialist knows how to build logical connections and find sequence links. A good testing specialist is like Dr. House who can get to the root of an issue. The Toyota Motors company came up with a good method of identifying the sequence links called Five Whys.

How? It takes years of practice in conjunction with readiness to figure out how to recognize patterns. You’ll have to learn from everything around: colleagues’ stories, personal experience, communication with developers, and so on. Anything that helps develop logical thinking can also help develop this skill. There are plenty of activities to choose from — playing chess, solving puzzles, or just solving mathematical problems.

All you need to do to develop the skill of identifying patterns is to get enough practice. A lot of practice. Chess grandmasters spend hours practicing. Regular continuous practice is the only way to develop the skill of spotting patterns at the highest level. Try getting out of your comfort zone, learn from experts and masters as well as from beginners. Soon, you will see some patterns taking shape and you will find yourself developing a keen eye for such patterns.

Learning math and exercising in solving different kinds of equations helps you develop and strengthen your skills of abstract thinking and spotting patterns. Be it sudoku or algebra that you are practicing, make sure that the problems you are trying to solve are gradually getting more complex.

Getting a sense of perspective is also important in identifying global or general patterns and rules. Similarly to how you can’t see the entirety of a vast desert from only observing it from where you stand at ground level, it’s hard to spot a pattern when you focus too much on one detail. Try taking a step back to see the big picture or consider the subject from a different angle — learn to view things from the back, from the inside, and from upside down.

3. Broad-scale visualization (Copernicus)

Why? 99% of test cases we do are aimed at testing the functions that haven’t been implemented yet. The only thing we can rely on is the project documentation (if we are lucky enough to have it). If you cannot visualize the future product’s mechanism of work and the system, then the system or module testing will be overwhelming for you.

How? A good way to train your visualization skill is participation in the product design process. Ask your customer for access and join the activities related to the creation of documentation or product architecture design. Start by working with the details and then move on to the whole mechanism, then try doing it backward.

To develop a high-quality product, engineers and testers must know the main task this product will fulfill or what problem it will solve. Discuss this with the customer, draw the final product on a whiteboard, imagine and talk through all the ways it can be used. Draw a business process flow chart. You must visualize your end product very clearly and work on it every day to achieve the best final quality.

The next step is thinking through all the technical nuances. Here, you have to envision every detail: how every function works, where each action brings you, how many results are expected after each action, and what it definitely should not do. Have you visualized all of these things? Then you know the next step.

You should think like a user: how they will act in this or that situation, if the app will be easy for them to use and if the app will be solving problems, not creating them.

4. Political Correctness/Soft skills aka communication skills (Gandhi)

Why? QA specialists are continuously communicating with software developers and C-level executives. Your job is to literally find mistakes in other people’s work. Every day, your colleagues put their time and effort in, so it’s crucial to communicate to them that something went wrong in an appropriate manner. Even if you work in a team of super professional people who take their work seriously, finding out that someone made a mistake is always disappointing and demoralizing.

How? You must always be delicate and to the point when communicating an issue to a developer. Your speech shouldn’t contain a hint of attitude — just a statement of the software failure. Try to make your description of the failure as plain as possible — don’t use complicated language or long sentences. Your expertise is to find the best way to explain a software defect you found, not to be the master of an artistic narrative.

Communicating your ideas is easier if you are an influencer. So your task is to become an influencer within your team and your company: win respect among your colleagues before you start telling them what they should do. To win respect, you have to make sure you bring value. Provide facts, metrics, examples, and proofs to help the decision-makers. Embrace the possibility that you can be wrong and so can other people. Stay sincere and positive. Take effort in helping your team to make the product you create better.

If you are working in an international team, pay attention to cultural differences as well. Make sure your communication is easy to understand, friendly, and non-offensive. For example, it is common for Americans to start a conversation with small talk. You need to know how to respond in a proper manner or even start with your own small talk. Also, Americans will rarely tell you straight that you did your job badly. You will have to ask for their critical opinion by asking certain questions.

Of course, it takes time and effort to develop your soft skills, but luckily we live in the time of plenty of information around us. I’ve collected a list of related courses on Udemy for you to check out.

5. Curiosity (A first-grade pupil)

Why? Software testers must gleam with pursuit for the unknown! They are like curious kids discovering the world — trying to press all the buttons, taking on different user roles (of experienced users and not so much), going against the system and all the rules. A good testing specialist aims for out-of-the-box thinking. This is exactly the way most hidden bugs get found.

How? Always ask the “What if…” question — even in your daily routine. You can never say “everything’s clear here.” What if I plug this into a 380V socket? What if I put hand cream on my face? What if I dry the cat in the microwave? I hope you get my point. You have to think about ways to disrupt the system. You must like to break things.

Do experiments. Try to think from a user’s perspective while at the same time using your knowledge of how the system works from the inside. Set challenges and be venturous in your attempts to get to the core.

Summary

At first glance, these skills might look less important than the level of your tech skills and experience, but they are a must-have for becoming a Superstar QA engineer in software testing. Don’t be disheartened — no one has been born with all of these qualities, but many have trained them with practice and learning. With a lot of practice and learning. Besides, these skills are useful in real life too.

Did you try any of these techniques to level-up your skills? Have you heard of or even used some of the recommendations from this article? Can you give any suggestions? Share your experience in the comments!