Software Tester Skills

There are three categories of skill that needed for any software tester.

• Testing skill
• Domain knowledge
• Technical expertise.

Any tester should have the basic testing skills like Manual testing and Automation testing. Tester having the common sense can even find most of the obvious bugs in the software.While testing any application tester should think like a end-user.

When tester know the functional domain better , then he/she can better write and execute more test cases and can effectively simulate the end user actions which is distinctly a big advantage.

Here is the big list of the required testing knowledge:

• Testing skill
• Bug hunting skill
• Technical skill
• Domain knowledge
• Communication skill
• Automation skill
• Some programming skill
• Quick grasping
• Ability to Work under pressure …

It is very difficult to have all the above skills.But you can stick to one skill or can be expert in one skill and have good understanding of other skills or balanced approach of all the skills. This is the competitive market and you should definitely take advantage of it. Make sure to be expert in at least one domain before making any move.

If tester don’t have enough domain knowledge of that project they need to quickly grasp as many concepts .Try to understand the product as if you are the customer and what customer will do with application. Visit the customer site if possible know how they work with the product, Read online resources about the domain you want to test the application, participate in events addressing on such domain, meet the domain experts. Or either company will provide all this in-house training before assigning any domain specific task to testers.

Team leader roles

1. As a team leader you are responsible for project planning, scheduling, communicating your project status to your manager and most important task of assigning and monitoring the project work.
   
2. Your main responsibility is to build a team to achieve your project goals.
3. You need to focus on handling the challenges in your project so that your team and project will grow and perform well.
4. Ensuring project plan changes are incorporated in test plan. You might write a test plan and test strategy (In some cases it might be written by senior test team member or even by project test manager) Ensure the work is going according to this test plan. Identify the risks and try to mitigate them. At the end of project testing life cycle ensure that all test objectives are accomplished and acceptance criteria is met.
5. More TL responsibilities includes: Test Case Review, Requirements Validation, Monitoring the execution of manual and automated test cases, Prepare test summary report and Communicate test status to seniors and prepare corresponding documents.
6.