Transitioning from Business Analysis to Software Testing - How Plausible is It?

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Foreword: This is going to be a bit of a personal breakdown, but I really see these two career pathways as intertwined, so I’d like to share these thoughts and ask about them with fellow testers. What it boils down to is that it shouldn’t be so difficult to make the jump from one to another, but I suppose not, apparently.

I’ve been spending the better part of the last year with a desire to make the jump from business analysis to software testing positions now, but there is no luck with it whatsoever - even freelance work is seldom landing. I’ve been building up a portfolio regarding my (mostly automation at this point) testing knowledge, but the way I see it you really need a bloated portfolio for people to even consider someone for an open position.

I’ve been thinking about how I was relating my current position of business analysis to the software quality control and assurance roles when I first delved deeper into them. Understanding the requirements, analyzing and breaking them down for the development process, and checking the UX side of the features feel like just one stone away from doing full-fledged UI and API testing. I like these aspects of my current role so much, and I am very good at them, but dislike the CRM side of things. This lately got me thinking if there are roles that fit my description more than either of these two…

Another thing I keep seeing is that people keep trying to switch from testing to business analysis and project management, not vice versa like I’m trying to do. I was wondering if anyone here had a similar desire and journey from the BA/project side of things to testing. I guess that, from a business standpoint, BA is probably the more rewarding of the two but shouldn’t it ultimately fall to technical orientation as you get the know the sectors?

I’m pretty burned out from being rejected at every turn, so I’m more-or-less at my wit’s end. Is it not worth trying to make this switch? Or, perhaps, some roles encompass BA qualities but are on the technical QA side of things? Would love to hear some thoughts from the testing community.

Thank you for your time and attention. Have a great day!

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Very plausible and probably easier than you think.
QA and BA are both analysts right? So similar skill sets. Both need to be good communicators with their teams and business partners. Both need to have a deeper understanding of the application and how it can affect your end-users.
QAs still need to know the business inside and out so they can effectively test the application or build test cases for the team to follow. QAs need to understand the Clients and how they use the application/service just like a BA would from their research and building requirements.

So there’s a LOT of cross over between the two roles that rely on the same fundamentals.

On a side note - It could just be where you’re applying to? If you’re only looking at work-from-home options that’s real cut throat right now and so difficult to find, or I know with AI and being first to market on things, a lot of companies are following DORA for their modeling DORA | Capabilities And unfortunately they don’t talk about QAs too much. So if you’re applying in tech forward spaces it may be why you aren’t getting where you want as those are saturated right now. Not sure where you’re looking but could be needing a different industry?

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My main point is, don’t give up :flexed_biceps:. Your experience is bringing a different perspective into testing that has a selling point. However, you do have to learn from each rejection so you can establish what the missing pieces are. Have you had any feedback as to why you’ve been rejected? Is there a pattern or a consistent message from that feedback? Do you yourself feel there are any weaknesses when you apply or interview for these roles?

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I agree there is a lot of crossover, I often look to BA’s to get the requirements I need to test for so I would need to know most of what a BA has defined. You do have to look at things slightly differently though, for example a BA might think an app has to do A, B and C, whereas the tester also needs to make sure it doesn’t do D through Z. I suspect that wouldn’t be too difficult.

What will be difficult (and I suspect is the root cause of your issues) is that the current job market is as depressed as it can be. It’s not your lack of skill set that is causing your rejections, it’s the sheer number of unemployed people means that you’re competing with a far higher number of applicants. Even those of us with decades of relevant skills and exact product experience are struggling for a job. Don’t let that dishearten you though, keep at it and eventually you’ll land something.

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Yes, transitioning from Business Analysis to Software Testing is definitely plausible and at QaonCloud, we’ve seen it work really well. BAs already have strong domain knowledge, attention to detail, and a clear understanding of user requirements all of which are key to great testing. We support such transitions through mentorship, tool training, and real project experience. If you enjoy working with quality and processes, QA is a great next step!

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I think the similarity between business analysis and testing is only superficial. Everyone thinks they can be a tester, and it’s true that anyone can be a bad tester, but not everyone can be a good tester.

Embracing the infinite
Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of becoming a tester is embracing the infinite nature of the task. A lot of people can’t do that. I expect a BA regards the requirements as being finite, so they know when they have identified them all. Developers just build the finite set of things that have been specified.

But testers need to test everything that anyone might do throughout the product’s life, including every path through the software with every permutation of data and with the system in every possible state. Often, the timing of events is an important parameter. The result is that there are an infinite (not just huge, but really infinite) number of tests you could do. No matter how much testing you do, it’s effectively zero percent of what could be done.

You’re not going to be given infinite time, yet you will be expected to find all the bugs. You will be expected to give sensible answers when asked how long testing will take and whether testing is complete. Are you really sure this is the career you want?

The hiring process
Part of your problem is that most hiring managers have no idea how to recruit good testers. You have zero chance if a company’s HR department are involved in the process. But even if you’re dealing directly with the person who would be managing you, most of them don’t have a clue either. They will want you to have worthless certifications like ISTQB and they will want you to have x number of years’ experience.

I have recruited people with little or no experience who within a few months have become better than many testers with five years’ experience. It’s a matter of finding people with the right qualities and training them well. I am not particularly interested in the ability to analyse requirements - I regard that as a fairly mechanical activity. In any case, requirement-based testing (as taught by ISTQB) is hopelessly ineffective. And good luck getting useful requirements on an agile project - the stories are usually so vague as to be useless as oracles.

Personal traits
I look for qualities like inquisitiveness, which is essential for good testing. When testers look at anything, they should be asking questions like what is this thing, what are its properties, why is it there, what does it do, how might it not do that, what can I do to it, how does it respond to that, what happens elsewhere when I do something to it? This kind of mindset is rare, even among “professional” testers. Without this, people are pretty much untrainable.

I’m looking for assertiveness - it’s a good sign if someone is willing to argue with me in a job interview, but extremely few people do that. Consistency is important - I ask applicants how they would do certain things, then I give them a practical test and observe what they do. There is rarely any correlation.

Technical knowledge
You can do useful testing without technical knowledge but you can’t become a really good tester. If you’re testing websites, I regard it as essential to be able to read HTML, CSS and ideally JavaScript and to have a strong understanding of technical paradigms like responsive design, AJAX, single-page applications, caching, lazy loading etc.

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Thank you for sharing your opinions. Regarding a couple of questions, I’d like to add that part of this building resentment also comes from the fact that, despite landing a few interviews now and then, interviewers usually become instant ghosts after the first phone calls or interviews, with all the questions afterward having no contact to ask them to. Even if I’m doing something wrong, hiring teams don’t give much of an opening to ask about what the issue is - though I am making changes and improvements frequently. I’m also trying my hand in different industries in addition to the ones I have experience in - when you’ve got your processes figured out for yourself, it’s just a matter of adapting them to the details specific to that role. I figured that there is no way to meet all of the expectations of almost all the job postings out there, so showing that expertise and adaptability are important.

As for personal qualities, I feel that I fit the bill most of the time. However, I try to increase my inquisitiveness in different areas of software (in addition to software behavior, that is). I also try to find that sweet spot where, if the quality metrics are met, you gotta go “If it’s good then don’t fix it further”. Truthfully, I believe that I have a knack for breaking stuff in unexpected ways, which, I found, was easy to turn into a trait for this line of work. Seeing or finding where a product would break out of its intended behavior is an ability I came to rely upon. However, I am aware that it is a neverending cycle and I need to temper my mentality in addition to my skills continuously.

Most people I talk to (devs and project managers, mostly) believe that testing and QA processes feel like something that gets boring after a while but searching for (and creating) the anomalies of a routine has always been attractive to me. I mean, life itself gets into a boring routine after a while inevitably. Why always chase after different things all the time rather than discovering and creating differences in your routine?

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You are correct that it should be easy to work in different sectors. I have developed a generic approach for testing literally anything, not just software, but very few testers have done that and very few trainers teach how to do it. This is why you see endless questions on testing forums such as “how do you test an e-commerce website”, “what are the test cases for an online banking website” etc. My heart sinks when I see questions like this. Domain knowledge is essential in some sectors, but fewer than you might imagine, and you can usually do a lot of useful testing without it.

Testing isn’t just about finding bugs, although that’s obviously important. It’s about identifying, mitigating, managing and eliminating risk. It’s about conveying risks and other important information to stakeholders. Pretty much none of that can be done using metrics because there are no statistically valid software testing metrics. It’s got to be done in narrative form.

Boring? Really?
Developers and managers think testing must get boring because they have no clue what testing is about. This is why it’s dangerous to allow them to manage the testing on a project, and why you need to “manage upwards”.

Testing certainly is boring if you believe it is just a matter of verifying the documented requirements, but you shouldn’t be doing that. Good testing is an investigation to find out things you don’t know. In the course of doing that, you can verify the documented requirements, but you will do much more than that. If you have imagination, testing can be endlessly fascinating.

Interview feedback
The lack of feedback from interviews doesn’t surprise me. In general, I think people are simply rude and disrespectful these days, and they consider themselves more important than you. This manifests itself in many ways. Also, companies are concerned about discrimination claims, so they can be reluctant to say why you were not selected.

GDPR law allows applicants to ask for all the information a company holds on them, which could be embarrassing. I never make notes during an interview, so I can deny having any such information. Instead, I make notes after the interview, but no one can prove that.

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The made comments and replies are good.

I would ask why you want to transition from a BA to Software Testing and actually don’t combine them, more as a QA Advocate or an Agile Quality role? For the most of the people in HR they have no clue about the huge variety and possibilities in Software Testing (they often just think we are pressing buttons on Apps or Websites to check if things work).

So maybe try a different job search approach, try to connect with people in areas you want to work. The past few jobs I never applied formally at the company, I was “found” by other folks in that area that recommended me. And I can truly sign what @steve.green and @simonnorris wrote.

Take part in online or offline software testing events or meetups, connect with people.

And - don’t give up.

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I totally agree about the importance of networking online and offline. Between the ages of 22 and 39, I never applied for a job, but I accepted three invitations from people I already knew. Then I applied for 800 jobs before getting my next one. After that, I founded Test Partners, and I recruited at least three of my best testers through offline networking.

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I wonder, does MoT do mock interviews? That could be a fun (and vulnerable) event for the community. Have a few members who are skilled at interviews conduct fake interviews for those who are looking for jobs or could use some help with their interview skills. This could allow for community feedback and the feedback you’re looking for specifically.

As far as boring aspect goes, I’ve seen that. I’m working with QAs now at my organization because they are bored. They want to dig deeper and build out more of that analyst skill set than running test cases. They are actively asking for some technical training and how to get involved in different ways. So I think there are some boring aspects to Testing but that’s going to be based on you and the industry. For me, manually doing regression sucks, I will legitimately quit if I’m asked to manually do regression day to day. Now doing exploratory, analyzing or breaking an application, that is real fun.

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