Which of the following is the most valuable skill for new testers to develop?

You can be part of the conversation and help people new to testing, share your expertise :star_struck:

Which of the following is the most valuable skill for new testers to develop?

  • Attention to detail
  • Problem solving
  • Communication
  • Other (shared in the comments)
0 voters
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Communication comes in many forms and I think many people don’t actually do this skill well.

You need to communicate your test findings.
You need to communicate the value your testing is adding to your team.
You need to communicate what you plan to test and why.
You need to communicate your concerns about certain risk areas etc.

The list goes on.

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Being able to explain “it depends”. :grin:

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That’s the answer to all the questions! :smiley:

I think attention to detail is overrated. Attention to where it’s needed is a skill, and the ability to move in and out of scope, to zoom all the way in to a function and all the way out to an industry, but detail is only occasionally worth looking at.

Problem solving is important, but if those problems are testing problems then those are solved with testing skills and knowledge anyway.

Communication is huge, to work well with developers and other people in your team, to earn the equity you need to get resources spent on your efforts, to tell others your findings, to give feedback, in design and kickoff meetings, it’s everywhere. All your findings are worthless without someone getting reliably informed. So out of the three I vote for this one.

I could say maybe humility. The exploration of testing has a lot of dead ends. There’s a lot of hypotheses we float on the understanding that many will turn out to be wrong. Constant failures that inform our learning. We can’t make those failures without a willingness to be wrong and carry on, and we therefore have to allow ourselves to be wrong. If bugs hide under assumptions of correctness we need to make hypotheses of wrongness - and that doesn’t just apply to other people’s work, in fact it’s especially our own we should be critical of.

Honestly the skill a tester needs to learn depends on the tester. Some need to learn the reasons for science, some the mechanics of science, some the skills of exploration. Some people need to learn how to study and self-improve. I had to work a lot on communication. I could get a point across really well, but because of my social issues I struggled to know when people understood or even if they had listened to me. I had to learn that just because a room full of people agree to something doesn’t mean they’ll do it. I also didn’t learn how to explore properly until my second job in testing.

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Communication, for all the reasons Nicola mentioned and more.

The biggest chunks of trouble that I’ve been able to avoid so far on my current project, have always been a result of having a solid foundation around the intent of the application, which came from communicating well with the client.

And just as importantly, avoiding that trouble was achievable by me being able to communicate clearly to the client why I had concerns about something, so that they could come to the same conclusions as I had.

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For someone who is starting their career in software testing, observation skill is very much required. At the start of their careers, they need to focus on the app, its purpose, and how it is to be used by the end-user, and for that observation skills are needed. Other skills are required but without observation skills, however, it will be very tough for testers at the later stages of their careers if they don’t prioritize observation skills. Whether it is regression testing functional or exploratory or any other testing, in each testing the observation skill is required.

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I recently ran into a challenge related to this topic as I had very different views on the topic than another manager that I highly respect.

I’m still working on a better way to understand each others stance and believe their stance is primarily about mainstream sales whereas my own in my view is about better testing.

We had common essential areas, like communication but we also had on first discussion significant differences.

I could list say 25 key skills for a tester but my basic fundamentals would be around observation, investigative, critical analysis and experimental skills focused on discovery.

The other view was that all those skills could be summerised under the single exploratory testing skill so their top skills alongside the common core like communication were closer to exploratory testing, automation, security, test planning and test reporting.

I’m sharing because I think these discussions happen a lot when there are a whole load of skills and learning that others will simplify to a single skill that is no doubt important but may at the same time lose insight in the depth of other skills required to get there.

I read that the question as if it’s not only about developing in professional testing as a new tester, but developing in some area when in the role of tester.
Therefore, the goal of that person matters: work life balance, an intrinsic need to help in making a product better, better income, growing within the company into other roles, experimenting with the role, being the gate keeper for the quality of a product, finding bugs, it’s just an easy to get/hold/do job, etc…
If we take the reasons for the new tester to have been hired and evaluated by, then another set of potential skills come into play based on their managers’ expectations.

I find this important. Thanks for calling it out @ujjwal.singh.

It’s like an essential superpower.

  • Observe things that others might not see or hear
  • Observe the subtleties written in the requirements
  • Observe the unspoken risks of a developer
  • Observe biases and weaknesses in one’s testing approach
  • Observe opportunities to improve how things are tested
  • Observe people dynamics and unofficial communication channels
  • Observe written and unwritten processes and everything in between

And take action.

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Dare to ask questions, and another valuable skill to train is the analytical skills. Learn to know what you see. Know why bugs occur and where they will most likely occur. Also try going off the beaten path. Everybody checks the happy flows so check something else

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I think it is very interesting to explore what “test competence” really is and what makes it unique, and I tried to define it in this article:

Obviously this is not the only answer and definitely not the “right” answer, but those were my thoughts when I wrote it down.

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I voted other as I think the most valuable skill is to learn how to think. Software testers are thought workers and I don’t think we promote that or acknowledge it enough. Not putting deep thought into our testing does ourselves, our companies and our product quality a disservice.
Testing is a task without end and it is only time, money or practicallity that draws a stopping point. Investing time in learning to think past assumptions, biases and our own conclusions is what, in my humble opinion, makes great testers.

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For new testers, critical thinking is the most valuable skill to develop. It enables testers to approach testing with a problem-solving mindset, identifying potential issues from multiple perspectives. While technical skills like automation are important, critical thinking allows testers to question assumptions, design effective test cases, and spot edge cases others might overlook. This skill also helps in communicating issues clearly and prioritizing bugs based on impact, making it foundational for growth in both manual and automated testing roles.

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