Sprint 4: What’s the non-technical skill that every tester should have, but most don’t seem to?

In Dominic’s absence, kicking off Sprint 4 Sprint planning for Sprint 4

Kicking off today 2018-06-13 finishing 2018-06-27.

Looking forward to your answers on this one. Perhaps you might like to look around the Club for some inspiration :wink:

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Ability to write a comprehensive bug report or testing notes.

What I mean by that: I’ve know a lot of testers who stay brain-immersed in their testing to the extent that while writing up notes or a bug report, they forget to include proper context. Some of the 'where/how/when/with what" information is perfectly clear to them, because they are soaking in the application at the time. But if that output spurs questions a month or two later… it’s no longer clear what happened.

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The ability to communicate clearly with all roles and levels of an organisation - from senior management and CIO level to the sales staff and people on the support desk.

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Also - and this may or may not be considered a technical skill - with machine learning becoming more important in tech in general, I believe that testers with a strong (at least undergraduate level) background in maths and statistics will have a real and distinct advantage.

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This is a tough one as I imagine I’m not alone thinking there are multiple answers to give. This is a prompt I can definitely work with though :slight_smile:

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Speaking and writing skills. Presentation skills. Leadership skills - and I don’t mean managerial, I mean the kind that let you get your point across without going red-in-the-face. If someone had started me off with those kinds of leadership skills, I’d be miles ahead in my career for sure. There is also the case that one can only learn those with time… but it would have been nice to be mentored into it.

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Agree, that’s why retros are a great place for the team to work together, assisting ones who have an issue getting their bug or note writing clear enough for anyone to understand

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Empathy. For users, for team mates, for yourself

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How to talk about their testing and what they h ave done in daily stand-up so that others actually know what they’re doing (not just “testing”)

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I would probably say tenacity. The ability to articulate their point well and stand their ground if they feel the need to defend their viewpoint.

Unfortunately sometimes allowing yourself to not be easily manipulated is important when testing software (especially when faced with strong bias!).

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Similar to a few other comments; I find in more junior QAs it is the “fear” of talking to more senior members of the team (PO, SDM, Dev) about a valid bug they have found. They have the fear as they don’t think their bug will be taken seriously or that they will look down on the them for finding the bug. However I always tell the junior QA just to do it - get all the evidence you can to prove it is a bug, triple check, and then if you really need to approach someone more senior team member just do it…you can’t not be confident with triple checked facts, and anyway, if you’re wrong it’s your job to find bugs.

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Understanding how to argue properly (i.e. from a solid factual basis), and how to counter fallacious arguments. Going back to the previous sprint’s topic of useful books, Carl Sagan’s “A Candle in the Darkness” has excellent coverage of the types of false arguments.

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The ability to find the balance between having self-confidence (to defend the defects they find) and putting themselves on developers’ shoes (to not hurt them when they talk about the errors)

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The ability to realise that the scope of tester’s responsibility is way beyond releasing product. Keeping eyes on logs, monitoring also comes in their plate.

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All of these ideas are excellent and certainly deserve a blog post with more detail :slight_smile:

I’ve written my own blog post. A slightly different idea from everyone else, and it’s a simple one: it’s to get away from your desk!

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Honestly, if you would have asked about “technical” skills, the list would have been longer.

I second the opinion of people who talked about communication skills or ability to explain to BAs or developers or even senior management.

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It would be nice to see some more blogs posted here as part of the Bloggers Club. Doesn’t have to be a long blog :slight_smile:

I keep meaning to write one for this sprint!!

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I see nobody has mentioned “Common Sense” yet… :thinking:

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Loads of great ideas here!

I’ve just gotten back in the office and I’m ready to write something this lunch time. It might end up being about coffee since I really suffered its lack in Canada (well my kind of coffee anyway)

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