People often ask me what makes a good QA engineer. What skills do you need to succeed in QA testing, and how do you get started? With that in mind, I’ve put together a list of some of the essential skills you need to be a good QA tester.
Detail-Oriented
The very first skill you need to excel in the world of QA is to be detail-oriented. Obviously being detail-oriented is an asset in any type of career, but it’s absolutely essential for anyone in Quality Assurance. You need to be able to spot not only errors, but anything and everything that isn’t actively perfect/ideal.
Anyone can notice when an app crashes, but will you be able to find a less conventional/obvious way of using the app that causes it to crash? Will you notice when a field that accepts a large amount of text isn’t expandable, or when it’s difficult for a user to tap a login button when holding their device with only one hand? Anyone in QA needs to sweat the details, big time.
Creativity
Another important skill for QA that may surprise some people is creativity. After hearing about how detail-oriented a QA engineer has to be, many people assume that creativity is the opposite. Not true! Being creative actually helps greatly in being detail-oriented, because it enables you to think outside of the box when assessing different ways a person might use the app or service that you’re testing.
The marriage of creativity and being detail-oriented also applies to writing test cases. It’s not enough to say, “I was able to sign out successfully, so that feature works” — did you try testing it with Wi-Fi versus cell coverage, or from an admin account as well as guest? The bigger your imagination is, the better when it comes to QA.
Communication
As a QA Engineer, you need to excel at communication with all different types of people, from CEOs to Project Managers, Designers, Customer Success, Engineers, and more. Your colleagues or clients will be relying on you to represent the customer or user’s point of view, and to know both when and how to reach out (and who to reach out to) about bugs you find, or potential user experience improvements.
You’ll need to know when it’s appropriate to simply file a bug ticket, and when you need to take it a step further and alert relevant stakeholders immediately. You’ll be relied on to assess and prioritize the severity of bugs, and to know how to explain a bug or potential improvement in both highly technical language as well as plain English so that every member of the team, from Engineering to Sales, can understand what the issue is and how it affects the product.
You also need to be respectful and kind (while still emphasizing the severity!) when reporting bugs to Developers/Engineers. They created the site, app, or other software, so it’s only natural that some might be inclined to feel defensive when being confronted with a problem in their code. Remember, you’re not here to blame or judge them — you’re all on the same team, working to make a product or service as beautiful as possible.
Are you detail-oriented, creative, and a great communicator? Nice — welcome to the world of QA! You’ll do great.