Be Proud to be a Software Tester

A lot of effort is put to reach a stage where you find yourself to see there are no mission critical bugs in software and is developed within the alloted budget. One of the value added effort that is utilized during a software development/maintenance phase is from the testing team. Testing team has an equal contribution as other teams that are involved in software development. An organization with an Independent Verification and Validation team has always been a major player in the industry. This does not mean that the other organizations are not quality oriented but the only difference is that they do not have specialized testers who can perform the test in a well-defined process. An independent testing team involved right from the start of the development stage to the release of the software plays a vital role for the success of the project.

The testing team can contribute to its best only if they are skilled. Yes, not all can become a good software tester. Software Testing is an Art. A good tester has his/her own way of breaking the software.
After knowing all these it is very much unfortunate that there are many individuals in the industry who still have the following understanding on software testing,

• Testing is an easy job, you do not need any specific skills.
• Testing is not a challenging work since it has no coding involved.
• Testers are involved only in testing phase of a software development life cycle.
• Anybody and everybody can be good testers.
• Any candidate fresh out of college can also be a good tester.
• A tester has to know only the functionality and nothing other than that.
• Place all the fresh candidates under one senior person who has a fair knowledge in software development and run it as your testing team.
• A tester knows nothing apart from commenting on others work.
• Testing is just an initial phase of a career in IT industry.

No, not all of the listed above are true. Most of the people who know about software testing have a different opinion and my personal opinion to consolidate them in short are as listed below,

• Testing does not appear challenging to those who are not aware or do not know the challenging part of it.
• There are many specialized areas in testing. For example: Performance Testing, Functional Test Automation etc.,
• Testers can play a major role in all the phases of software development life cycle.
• You can make an individual as a good tester only when you properly mentor him.
• A fresh candidate out of a college can be a good tester provided you train him on software testing.
• Apart from system functionality, a good tester also needs to know about the non-functional areas of the software.
• Only an experienced, competitive and a skilled tester can manage and guide a testing team and drive them better.
• Software Testing is a profession as such; it’s a career choice provided one follows the right path in testing.
• Above all this one should develop interest in software testing to excel in this field.