I decided to compare and contrast the differences between our explanations and the roles within the listing, here’s what I found.
Matches
The first responsibility in the listed job is “Code automated tests to spot the most critical development errors”, this role goes with our explanation of skills from a tester which is “Critical and lateral thinking”. You need to be critical a thinker in order to solve critical errors that may occur during the development.
The second responsibility which is “Review and analyse requirements” also measures up to one of our explanations of the activities testers would carry out which is “Test ideas and requirements”.
The fourth responsibility mentioned in the role of the listed job “Document and carry out manual testing” is also similar to the explanation of general testing and could link with “Test products to discover information”. Documenting results from manual testing is the same as discovering new information from testing products. Whatever findings are found will be recorded and beneficial.
The last responsibility on the list “work closely with developers and skakeholders to ensure quality throughout the software development lifecycle, with quick feedback loops” can also go under the similarities of the explanation of “Support shared understanding”. these are similar because they both have involvement of communicating with other teams that are involved which will prove to other teams that you are on the same page and can produce expected quality work.
Differences
The third point of responsibilities “Help to design user stories and acceptance tests” is different from our points of explanation from testers.
I chose to research the Scrum Master role, which had the following responsibilities:
Work with Product Managers
Manage timeline deliverables
Review briefs received, estimate timings & plan workloads
Build and maintain motivated project squads and teams
In addition to this, the role also required the following skills:
Experience of agile delivery management
Experience of waterfall delivery management
Background in DevOps
Experience of Scrum and Prince2
Compared to the lesson, the Scrum Master role listing includes a multitude of different types of delivery management in relation to the SDLC, which included “Prince2”, a project management method which wasn’t mentioned in the lesson. Contrary to this, there was little emphasis on leadership & coaching skills in the listing.
I chose the role of a manual tester and I found the following specifications regarding this role.
The skills needed,
• A clear understanding of manual testing
• The ability to write complex SQL queries on a daily basis
• Strong experience of Web-based testing
• A keen eye for detail and logical thinking
• Great communication and team orientated mentality
• Experience working in an Agile environment
I didn’t find any where there was any real difference in what was explained in the lesson. There was a role that required a combined developer and tester. This called for skills explained under the developer role too but again nothing that wasn’t explained under the develop description in the lesson either.
Some common key responsibilities and skills I saw across roles were:
Responsibilities
Skills
Involved across full lifecycle of development
Work well with developers and business teams
Identifying test requirements
Confident speaker / communication skills
Test writing- Clear definition of done and acceptance criteria.
Keen eye for detail
Translate requirements into test cases
Creative/ Problem solver
Test execution
Lateral thinker
Managing defects approach- identifying, recording and reporting as well as testing resolutions.
Inquisitive/Curious
Provide feedback to team
Ability to self-drive and also work well as part of a team
Document and report test results
Participate in weekly Sprint calls with developers.
I researched tester positions at Amazon and Google (as well as a few others), and I found that job postings tended to be more specific with their requirements as well as more broad.
What I mean by that is that the job postings would list out various skills and abilities they desired of a tester, such as creating and owning test plans, contributing to product design and building test strategy, improving workflows and infrastructure, and executing various kinds of tests: functional, integration, performance, automation, regression.
While I think the lesson provided a good overview of the abstract skills required to be a tester, the job postings are informative about the current, practical skills seen as desirable by companies looking to hire for the profession.