A way of looking at it...
Future of tester is challenged both from 'outside-world' as well as from 'Customer within'. Customer is exploring new ways of doing business and they come up with multitude of products/ projects in their portfolio to cater to the needs of their customers.
Agile methodologies also have changed the way Customer
delivers products to their end customers : The release frequency has changed from 'once-a-year' to 'once-in-2 weeks'. This huge change itself
exerts enormous challenge on the shoulders of the testers.
Outside world, the testing landscape is also changing with
new trends. Emergence of Cloud, Mobile, IOT (including wearables), and Big data
applications require new testing paradigms.
Skills in new testing
tools, virtualization technologies (including Service, OS etc), managing test data, device simulation (specially for mobile, ‘Last-mile testing’,
‘In the wild testing’ are some of the buzz words that are being echoing in the
testing community
This has rendered that a software tester cannot be just a
manual function tester, but he needs to be transformed to a skilled and
competent tester who is able to take the future challenges.
Specialization
for testers
- Test Automation
- Performance testing
- User Experience testing
- Security Testing
Testers can master any of the above areas they are passionate about Becoming an expert in each of them will provide him/her with added advantage in surviving/
excelling.
Also Proper education/training and QA certifications (ISTQB, CSTE, CEH) are also
important to have a better personal profile and development.
Challenges
from Customer
Frequent release model – products are being released frequently
and how testers manage it in sustainable way without being over-stressed and
without compromising the quality
Development team members participate in testing. – How can
the tester add value to the team while developers do the functional testing?
Plethora of products- New products are being added to the
portfolio which needs testing, this increases the complexity of testing environments/
scenarios etc.
Future of
agile
Will the agile era be over in the next decade? Not really. Therefore the agile tester will still be alive and Customer will continue be in agile
business. We need to have the role of a tester to be ‘Full stack agile
tester’.
A full stack agile tester is a generalizing QA specialist who is technically competent in all test levels, types and strategies who is also adaptive/responsive, collaborative and culturally fit as an agile team member.
A full stack agile tester is a generalizing QA specialist who is technically competent in all test levels, types and strategies who is also adaptive/responsive, collaborative and culturally fit as an agile team member.
What it
takes to be a full-stack agile tester?
- Notion of ‘Pair’. This includes
o
Pair negotiation- healthy debate
o
Pair strength – cross skilled
o
Pair understanding- less surprises
o
Seamless workflow- less handoff
o
Pair accountability- the notion of team entails
shared accountability
- Become a USER PROXY- be in user's shoes and suggest improvements to the team. How to improve UX, challenge the initial requirements- help in fine tuning them.
- Work the extra mile in time of need
- Keep the team’s continuous attention to technical excellence
- Have a test automation suite and handover repetitive tasks to it while saving time and effort in exploratory testing
- Use ‘Swarming’ technique to finish a task in case of urgency with in the sprint
- Build an ultra-collaborative relationship with the team by being genuine, honest , open and by being professionally pessimistic. Ask smart questions, make suggestions
- Play the dev/quality advocate role
o
Be a requirement champion, teach Devs how to
do effective functional testing. Have good test cases created and share with
the devs.
o
Remind maintainability/scalability/ other non-functional
aspects during sprint planning/ other meetings
- Become T shaped skilled tester
o
While having a thorough knowledge about the
product/ project you work, have the ability to work outside of core product. Have
a sense of other products. When given quickly adapt to the situation and carry
out testing
- Finally get trained for what is lacking.
