Do Software Test Professionals Needs More Technical Skills?

A couple recent events might seem to indicate a greater appetite–and need–for greater technical skills.  I thought I’d leave a quick video blog post on this topic–see Technical Testers Blog.  Let me know what you think.  Are we in need of stronger technical skills?  Do you have technical skills?  Do you need and want technical skills?

Tags: software test training, software testing, technical testers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at 5:33 PM by Rex Black and is filed under software testing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

7 Comments to “Do Software Test Professionals Needs More Technical Skills?”

1. Hitesh says:

   August 17, 2010 at 5:53 PM

   Hi Rex,

   That was a very good initiative to start the video blogs. I am expecting many more knowledge sharing sessions(videos) from your side.
   Talking about the Technical skills are essential for testers or not, according to me, Testers should be technically skillful. Many a times domain knowledge is not sufficient to find a hidden defect. Also sometimes even if you find a bug the programmer can mislead you by giving some technical reason.
   In certain area of testing, like performance testing the technical skills are definitely required to know the architecture, generating scripts etc.
   to cut short, TESTING can be done efficiently and effectively if the tester is technically sound.
2. Rex Black says:

   August 17, 2010 at 7:27 PM

   Hi Hitesh–

   If you like the videos, be sure to check our Digital Library: http://www.rbcs-us.com/software-testing-resources/library/digital-library

   I do tend to agree with what you wrote on technical skills making you a more effective and efficient tester. I’m interested in hearing other people’s ideas.

   Regards,
   Rex
3. Gary Rueda Sandoval says:

   August 18, 2010 at 9:21 AM

   Hi Rex and partcipipants,

   It is desirable that you have stronger technical skills in every testing role… but sometimes it is not as necessary as other skills..

   In my experience is that it depends what role, what type of test, and what test level, what testing tools is using.

   The role you take influences how strong technically you should be, which means that sometimes it is not necessary to have very strong testing technical skills to be successful in your role. If you are a Test Manager you could have medium technical knowlege and be successfull managing the process, time, people and budget of the testing project as we know that these roles must have strong physicological, organizational, verbal and communicational skills rather than strong technical skills…

   In the role of a Tester Designer it is more desirable that you have stronger Domain Knowledge and Test Design Knowledge than Programming Testing Scripts or Running Capture/Replay tools..
   There are also tools that allow you to do Test Automation without scripting. There you do not necessarilly need strong technical skills… Those tools are no technical people oriented.

   It also depends on the level of testing that you are doing.. if you are working in an unit testing phase then you need stronger technicall skills on the target programming language and also testing techniques.. and lower no technical skills…

   It also depends on the type of test you are running if it is performance testing then you needs stronger technical skills

   In conclusion I would express it as this: “It is desirable that testers have stronger technical skills, but not always necessary”

   Regards,

   Gary
4. Rex Black says:

   August 18, 2010 at 2:41 PM

   Hi Gary–

   I think this is a very good way of looking at it. By doing a task analysis and developing a skills inventory, you can determine how much technical skill is needed for a specific position. By the way, the November free webinar on Hiring Great Testers will discuss this topic of skills inventories.

   Regards,
   Rex
5. Chetty says:

   August 24, 2010 at 2:06 AM

   Rex,

   Interesting to see this topic on here.

   I manage a team of testers where the skill level is predominantly functional / domain oriented. Yes, there are a few testers who understand technology, but not all.

   Personally I come from a programmer’s background and moved into the testing space. I’ve always felt that the combination of technical and domain skills turn out to be a deadly combination.

   The thing about technology is one cannot master every technology possible on earth. However, one needs to have some basics driven into their thought process so that it becomes almost second nature.

   One should be familiar with GUI components. For eg., What are the key differences between a check box and a radio button?

   One should be familiar with basic data modelling concepts such as entities, attributes, relationships etc.

   There’s definitely a lot more, but don’t want a comment to turn into a white paper.

   In these days when the whole world (or so it seems) are talking about Agile methodologies, it is important that a tester understands a bit of technology as well to be an effective player in the game.

   Curious to know what other fellow testers think about this.
6. Avner Uzan says:

   December 23, 2010 at 3:16 PM

   Generally this is a case of more is better. If a tester is more familiar with a technology they will have a deeper understanding of what might be causing an issue & possibly even where to probe to find problems. The question then is, are the stakeholders willing to pay more for more technical resources. It’s not that they aren’t available, it’s that there’s a general assumption in the market place that testers are cheaper by the dozen. This can actually be true, if you looking for warm bodies to pound on a keyboard randomly. If however the intention is to produce reusable, repeatable, application relevant tests, someone more technical will probably cost more & be able to provide more of that desired depth.
7. Rex Black says:

   December 23, 2010 at 3:32 PM

   I agree with your comments, Avner. Getting stakeholders outside of the testing process to understand the positive impact of higher-skilled testers on the testing process is a key challenge. The “how hard could it be, anyone can do it, just make sure it works before we ship it” mindset is a dangerous delusion that results in a lot of poorly-tested software in the world.