1.Attitude.
2.Knowledge.
3.One who can be costumers shoes.
4.Communication.
5.Will to Automate things.
6.Patience.
Attitude:
Attitude is the most important thing no matter what you do in life, if you don't have an right attitude eventually you will fade or not find the amount of success you are looking for.
So what's the right attitude for a Test Engineer? I believe it should be like a detective, some one like "Sherlock Holmes".
There are few reasons to have a detective attitude:
1.You concentrate to find root cause of any bug rather than just finding floating bugs.
2.The deeper you go, the more knowledge you acquire.
3.Deep down one bug could be pointing to more critical issues or colony of bugs.
Have a no fear attitude, don't fear to create, invent or innovate things. May be few people at
start reject your ideas but if you believe in your ideas stick to them, prove that you are right.
Knowledge:
Knowledge grows if you have right attitude and urge to learn things, make sure you note down things as you move forward. Remember experience only counts when you know how to deal with similar situations which you had deal in past.
Its MUST for a Test Engineer to have knowledge of:
1.Domain in which test application is working.
2. SDLC life cycle.
3.Bugs life cycle.
4.At least one scripting language.
5.Technical vocabulary of testing.
Be in Customers shoes:
Be in customers shoes demand quality from development team, test the product from customers point of view.
Think this way, you paid for the product that your testing and then see the difference it makes to your urge to find bugs.
Communication:
Questions are sign of progressive human beings. Don't assume things, get doubt cleared by asking question to concerned people.
Tact and diplomacy are useful in maintaining a cooperative relationship with developers, and an ability to communicate with both technical (developers) and non-technical (customers, management) people is useful.
Automate:
Don't feel shy to automate test cases even thought the client or management has not shown any need of it. Believe me it saves lot of time. Automation can be done in two ways using tools or using scripting languages.
Patience:
Sometimes things get repetitive, in fact most of times you find yourself testing same things again and again. So as said earlier use automation it saves time and keeps frustration at bay. But sometimes you have to do repetitive tests due to lack of skills to automate, or the situation demands it.
--Tushar Murudkar.
