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

You have to understand who will be using the application you are testing and be able to think/work as they do. Are they an office worker who does their job while talking on the phone, to a co-worker, etc. and inadvertently hits the wrong combination of keys? Will it be the office worker who is dependent on the application to do their daily job, therefore they will do everything in their power to break it when they see it to limit their down time? Think like a user, not a developer.

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Can I already post my submission? Oh, I don’t care anyhow :slight_smile: , here it is: https://medium.com/@adam.hepner/about-a-non-technical-skill-that-every-tester-should-have-8960ab14e01

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Haven’t had much time recently and got into blogger laziness so here is my rushed and impressively lame effort, sorry.

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http://www.qahipster.org/blog/common-sense-is-a-super-power

I actually had this half written a week ago and forgot.

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Imagination! Being able to figure out every tricky way a user will use the system (almost none will do what the manual says).

Below would be my top non-technical picks for testers:

Communication
Collaboration

By communicating you are sharing your ideas of what you just explored or what is the error in the system.
By collaborating you are broadening your horizon and skills as a tester and looking at the big picture and also helping others think like how you do

Communication and good approach toward your team.
Remember, as a testers we are looking for someone else’s mistakes and what someone did wrong.
No one really likes being pointed at all mistakes they have made so testers approach toward developers and toward client when talking about Issues and Errors is the most important thing for a tester to have in my opinion.
Since again, you have to report to a Client what your team (for which hours they are paying and every mistake is costing them more money).

So would say, testers need to have great communication skills.