What are the qualities required for a good Software QA Engineer?

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Permalink Reply by shirish on May 18, 2009 at 3:47pm

First of all he should love testing, and exploring things on his own. Keen to learn and break s/w at times....should possess excellent analytical skills...should possess good communication skills and should be able to convey bugs properly / in appropriate way to dev people (requires bug advocacy skils )

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Permalink Reply by Siva Reddy on May 21, 2009 at 11:02am

1. Has “test to break” attitude
2. An ability to take the point of view of the customer
3. A strong desire for quality
4. Should be tactful & diplomatic and should be able to maintaining a cooperative relationship with developers – people skills.
5. An ability to communicate with both technical and non-technical people is useful.
6. An understanding of software development process is helpful. Without knowing development, they will not be able to understand the kinds of bugs that come into application and the likeliest place to find them. The tester who doesn't know programming will always be restricted to the use of ad-hoc techniques and the most simplistic tools.
7. There's never enough time to test "completely", so all software testing is a compromise between available resources and thoroughness. The tester must optimize scarce resources and that means focusing on where the bugs are likely to be. If you don't know programming, you're unlikely to have useful intuition about where to look.
8. A tester must have deep insights into how the users will exploit the program's i.e. domain knowledge.
9. Good testers notice little things that miss or ignore.
10. An ideal tester should not take anything as granted.
11. Testers should not have habit to report bugs / defects publicly. This attitude hurts the developers.
12. Good Judgment skills are needed to assess high-risk areas of an application.
13. Communication skills and the ability to understand various sides of an issue.

Qualities of a good Software QA engineer:
1. Should have all above mentioned qualities of a good Software TestEngineer.
2. They must be able to understand how software development process can fit into the business approach and goals of the organization.
3. An ability to find problems as well as to answer the question ‘what’s missing’ is important for inspections, reviews and audits.

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Permalink Reply by Namrata Mishara on May 21, 2009 at 6:15pm

Hi Siva,

I agree with your answer. Thanks

Regards,
Namrata

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Permalink Reply by Anil Kumar on May 22, 2009 at 9:22am

Good explanation Siva. Keep it up

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Permalink Reply by Sireesha K on May 22, 2009 at 3:40pm

Hi Siva,

Very good explaination. Thanks for that.

Best Regards,
Sireesha/-

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Permalink Reply by Ramakrishna Rao on May 24, 2009 at 10:51pm

A Good Test Enginner has "test to break" attitude and strong desire to wards quality and quality standards. Must have good understnading of SDLC process.Must have good relation and communication with developer and customers. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Thanks.

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Permalink Reply by Madhukar M on May 25, 2009 at 5:16pm

Dear friend,

i think for good test engineer need not to have any relationship with customer, we have good knowledge regarding the applciation

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Permalink Reply by Siddiq on May 26, 2009 at 11:15am

@ Madhukar,

What's wrong in having good relationship with your Customer???

If customer isn't able to communicate his requirements, with QAs intervention can gatther the requirements better!

Having good relationship is an Art, tester requires it.

Thanks,
Siddiq

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