Every organization system operates under certain quality requirement. Software testing in an integral part of quality assurance and a tester can contribute to quality improvement by finding bug. A QA Analyst's responsibility is different then a tester's this role is responsible to create and in force standards and methods to improve overall software development and testing process.
Technical excellence (person who is very good at finding system bugs, good at automation tools, scripting, and debugging) is not enough to be a good software QA tester. Knowledge about qa methodology and process is equally important to use that technical ability. At the requirement gathering and analysis phase some QA persons cannot understand what their role is in this phase of SDLC. Their understanding is that there is nothing to test now because no test cases are ready yet. But, a QA person has a big role to play to check standards of the requirements itself.
What I personally feel is if a QA tester is clear about QA methodology, standards, his thinking is not based only on the documents but he also questions himself what are they going to develop? What is there in documents? What is missing? What is not necessary? This questioning process takes his knowledge to mature level which reflects in his documentation, test case writing, and his overall performance in other phases of STLC.
It is equally important for job search and interview. Question like 'when to start testing' is not that bad for a person who has drilled little bit QA methodologies. But I doubt it would that easy and to-the-point if a person doesn’t have methodological base. Sometime even software terms and terminologies put you in embracing situation during interview and during real work environment. Years back, my TL assigned me to walk new person through about project and testing. I spent significant effort to make him understand bug life cycle. He was actually testing bugs that were assigned to developers and not done. Here my intention is not to criticize him, but trying to tell that a tester person having knowledge of Bug life cycle and status would never touch a bug with 'not done' status and assigned to a developer. For more software testing theory topics go here
Technical excellence (person who is very good at finding system bugs, good at automation tools, scripting, and debugging) is not enough to be a good software QA tester. Knowledge about qa methodology and process is equally important to use that technical ability. At the requirement gathering and analysis phase some QA persons cannot understand what their role is in this phase of SDLC. Their understanding is that there is nothing to test now because no test cases are ready yet. But, a QA person has a big role to play to check standards of the requirements itself.
What I personally feel is if a QA tester is clear about QA methodology, standards, his thinking is not based only on the documents but he also questions himself what are they going to develop? What is there in documents? What is missing? What is not necessary? This questioning process takes his knowledge to mature level which reflects in his documentation, test case writing, and his overall performance in other phases of STLC.
It is equally important for job search and interview. Question like 'when to start testing' is not that bad for a person who has drilled little bit QA methodologies. But I doubt it would that easy and to-the-point if a person doesn’t have methodological base. Sometime even software terms and terminologies put you in embracing situation during interview and during real work environment. Years back, my TL assigned me to walk new person through about project and testing. I spent significant effort to make him understand bug life cycle. He was actually testing bugs that were assigned to developers and not done. Here my intention is not to criticize him, but trying to tell that a tester person having knowledge of Bug life cycle and status would never touch a bug with 'not done' status and assigned to a developer. For more software testing theory topics go here
