From mutual funds to startups, big media to textile giants, every company is utilising technology these days and each one has their unique requirements for automation and software. While the software implementation as well as development is vital to these companies, there is an evolving need for good agile software testers. This post explores the key skills of a Agile tester and how it can contribute to software development.
It is known that agile development methodology has been the norm for many technology companies around the world. But why is it that some companies succeed and some don’t? The sad part here is few companies think that they are agile as they practice agile concepts such as retrospectives and daily stand-ups, but they are far from agile in reality. The difference here is all about the people involved, irrespective of the position they are in an organization. A good agile tester will lay a strong foundation for an agile working culture in the organization. This article explains the qualities of a good agile tester.
Staying Focused
In the organisation, every agile tester should know what they are working towards. It is witnessed many times that individual testers get bogged down on the details of daily work that they lose sight of the big picture. Good agile testers should make sure the mission and goals of the company are clear to them and this also includes the stakeholders and scrum teams customers.
They must also make sure the work being carried out has a clear purpose and is progressing towards the vision. In the same way, it is vital to set the scope and boundaries of the work so that they don’t involve in unnecessary activities.
Sharing Ideas Effectively
This means that you must be active when you attend scrum meetings. In order to improve the product, your influence is needed on quality assurance in agile development methodologies. You must share any new ideas that you have in your mind as it is useful for the project improvement.
Having Automated Scripts
Agile testers conduct regression testing in order to test every change in the code. This is to make sure that the newly added features will not disturb the previous functionality. Planning for the regression testing is difficult for an agile tester as he/she will be busy with testing new stories. So, the best solution can be having automated scripts for previous stories and a good agile tester must use automation as it is quite essential here.
Continuous Integration
A good agile tester should begin a new cycle and execute all the test cases when a new build is implemented successfully. After executing the test cases, the tester should report them early to the developers if they find any new defects.
Examining Test Results
The job of a good agile tester is not testing alone. He/she must understand the data gathered from testing and examine it for the particular behaviour of a product or an application. The tester needs to find out the root cause of a bug. For this, he/she must analyze the test data, test environment, interruptions, etc. In automation testing, examining the data collected after execution of scripts is the most important part but not creating scripts and executing them. So, a good agile tester must analyze the data gathered after the execution of scripts.
Understanding How to Code
In an agile environment, although programming is not required for testers, understanding programming is becoming an important skill for testers. Having knowledge on programming allows testers to create more efficient tasks in the long run along with helping finish tasks faster without the need for assistance from the developers. So, understanding how to code is one of the qualities of a good agile tester.
Having an Analytical Mindset
One of the important skills of a Agile tester is being able to think creatively as well as critically. While analytical mindsets are certainly an asset, testers are being asked to aid innovation efforts in order to improve testing methods and vary testing scenarios. Having both these skills will allow testers to notice hidden errors faster and come to well-reasoned conclusions and do what no one else has even thought to do. Thus, these qualities are essential for a good agile tester to do what no one else has even dared to do.
Clear Demonstration of Data
Often, during devops practice, testers are asked to present information in front of major stakeholders, detailing things such as noticed defects and how quickly these issues were patched. Here, a good agile tester must be in a position to demonstrate their data clearly and in a way that is quite easy to follow. Communication skills are crucial for testers as they may be asked to speak in front of a group of business leaders. They must also collaborate with developers to finish the tasks on time. Hence, demonstrating information in a clear and concise way is one of the major qualities of a good agile developer.
Wrap-Up
Agile testers are a vital component of the development effort and the skills of a Agile tester can really change the success of a team. They must adjust their abilities to improve operations and keep up with requirements as the software development processes continue to change. With the qualities mentioned above, testers can remain effective in an agile environment and make sure that they are meeting business goals.
Author Bio:
Savaram Ravindra is working as a Content Contributor for Mindmajix.com and Tekslate.com. His passion lies in writing articles on different niches which include some of the most innovative and emerging software technologies, digital marketing, businesses, and so on. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter.
