10 Essential Skills of a Successful QA Software Tester

Are you thinking about changing your career into a completely different industry? Then it is a good idea to check if you have the skills you will need to succeed at your software testing job. So what are the 10 essential skills of a successful software tester you ask? Well, read on to find out.

As I mentioned here many times, I switched my career into tech without having a tech degree.

Was it easy? Not really.

Would I do it again? 100 percent yes.

Why? Because I keep learning new things everyday while having the freedom to work from anywhere. I have full responsibility for my work like I was running my own business without the uncertainty of the next pay check. My job is secure and well paid.

So if you are looking for something similar, a tech career might be the right fit for you as well. The question is, will you be the right person for the tech industry? Let’s find out.

Here are the skills I find essential for a successful software tester career. I based them on my own experience so other software testers can have sightly different experience. But these worked for me so they might work for you as well.

1. Organized Software Tester

The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization.

– Calvin Coolidge

Your job as a software tester is writing a test plan, test cases, test scenarios, performing all different types of tests, triaging bugs and defects, working with developers, talking with clients, aligning with the product owner, checking the design styles with designers, and more. It is a very versatile and sometimes almost overwhelming job. I wrote a post about a typical day of a software tester before.

In order to be able to tackle all these duties the right way, you need to be able to organize your time wisely and efficiently. Lack of organization can cause a pretty quick burnout. If self-organization and time management are not your forte, do not despair. You can easily learn that skill at your current job.

Even when you are preparing yourself for the IT career switch you can start practicing good time management. You can write a plan of what you want to achieve and put some time deadlines on it. Let’s say if you want to try to switch your career in 6 months, you will plan to learn all about software testing within the next 3 months. Then you will try to get some testing experience in two months. The last month will be for upgrading your resume and Linkedin profile.

Another way to practice your own and time organization is keeping track of what you do during each day. Do you procrastinate a lot? Do you try to multitask or rather focus on one project at a time? Maybe keep a journal and write down all your behavior. In my case, distraction was my enemy. As soon as I became aware of it, I learned how to minimize it. My friend recommended keeping an idea notebook where I can write down all my ideas as they come to me without disturbing my work. Before that, I would always want to explore the idea fully and stopped focusing on the task at hand. Now, I write the idea down and get back to it when I have time. Because I wrote it down I won’t lose it and don’t have to give it more energy right now.

So try that for a day. Try to be aware of what you do during the day and see if you could organize your time and yourself better.

2. Software Tester’s Winning Routine

The secret to your future is hidden your daily routine

– Mike Murdock

Having a winning routine will help you in any career, really. But more so in a new career in a completely different industry. This skill is sort of connected to the time and self-organization above. If you can organize your time and your desires and acts well into a good routine, you will achieve anything.

For me, my winning routine does not include only how I do my testing job but really my entire daily routine. I get up around 6 am, drink water with lemon, and read the news. Then I do yoga and meditation for 45 min with a focus on my back and shoulder muscles since I work on my laptop a lot. I take a shower, walk the dog, have breakfast, and move to my laptop about an hour before I start my job. I usually use that hour to write this blog or learn something new not necessarily connected to my job.

At 9 am I move towards testing. I check my emails, slack, and Jira board to understand what I have to do that day. I answer most messages and think about what I did the day before and what I will need to do this day. Then we have a daily standup with the team. There I present exactly what I was just describing – I share with the team what I did the day before and what is my plan for today. I listen carefully to the other team members (mainly developers) to understand where are they currently with the stories they are working on. If I have some questions to my testing job, I asked those there.

Then I start the testing work and move from one story/task/bug to another one. This might be hard, as especially towards the end of the sprint there might be a lot of tickets coming at once. Then there are people coming with questions as well.

After I finish work, I do my evening yoga and chi gong to close the working day off and sort of separate my office from my home. Yes, I work fully remotely.

This routine has worked very well for me and you should totally try it too!

3. Fully Focused Software Tester

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

– Alexander Graham Bell

There will come a time in your software testing career when you will have to deal with multiple tickets and queries from all different people at the same time. If you try to do everything at once, aka multitask, you will probably fail. That happened to me a couple of times. I felt like I had to answer everybody’s questions right away and work on multiple testing jobs at once. The outcome was that I was not doing anything well. I even missed some bugs which are bad for a software tester.

So I had to stop multitasking. Nobody will die if I don’t answer somebody’s question instantly. I also fully focused on the task at hand. I test one ticket and only when I finish it, I move over to the next one. This allowed me to become good at what I was doing. But it required me to be fully aware of myself and my actions.

4. Software Tester’s Eye for Details

It’s attention to detail that makes the difference between average and stunning.

– Francis Atterbury

When you become a software tester you need to catch even the smallest inconsistencies in the project. I was not very detail-oriented before I started working as a software tester. That means being detail-oriented can be learned. Again, it requires being fully immersed in the task at hand and not trying to multitask (at least in my experience). And funny enough, your testing personality will show in your daily life as well. Since working as a software tester, I keep seeing typos on web pages and I always try all the links whether they are working. Sometimes I get as far as contacting the website that they have typos/broken links. Yes, I know, professional deformation. Oh well, at least I am really detail-oriented now.

5. Software Tester Sees the Bigger Picture

Everything happens for a reason, everything is part of a puzzle that, even at the time, if we don’t understand the bigger picture, everything has a significant role in what’s to come in the future.

– Jon Connor

Although you need to be detail-oriented to see even the smallest problem on the webpage, you should not lose the bigger picture view. Software, web, and other applications are developed to achieve multiple goals. One of the goals is usually solving a user’s problem. Therefore, we always need to keep user experience in mind. However, the company that is developing the app/software is usually trying to make money by doing so (directly or indirectly). So we, as software testers, need to keep this in mind as well. On top of it, there is usually another point of view as well. For example, when we check the accessibility of the app/software, we keep in mind that disabled people need to be able to use it while the legal requirements of the company developing the software/app are fulfilled as well.

6. Software Tester Thinks out of the Box

Always think outside the box and embrace opportunities that appear, wherever they might be.

– Lakshmi Mittal

Although you need to follow certain general testing rules while you do your software testing job, you should not ever feel like that it is all. As software testers, we need to think about edge cases. We should try to be step ahead of the user. We also need to keep in mind that not all users are predictable and that they can try to break the app. All these “out-of-the-box” thoughts will help you to predict all the ways the app/software can be used and need to be tested for that reason. Testing the app/software always the same way can lead to missing the biggest defects and bugs. And you do not want that happen.

7. Software Tester’s Curiosity

I am neither especially clever nor especially gifted. I am only very, very curious.

– Albert Einstein

You will need to be curious to enjoy software testing. If you are not curious you will get bored soon. Curiosity will allow you to see each feature from a new angle every time you test it. It will give you insight into the app/software nobody else in the company has. You will get the ins and outs of it. You will understand why is it working the way it is and why it is not doing something else. Curiosity will allow you to try new software testing tools to understand the app better. It will be the main drive behind learning coding and automation.

If you lose your curiosity, the project will become very boring. You will dread every day. When you are working on the same project for a long time, you might lose your curiosity. It is very important to try to find it again.

I can feel when I am losing my curiosity. I feel demotivated and testing becomes super tedious. If that happens I take a step back and do something else for a couple of hours. Then I try to approach the project/feature with new eyes and new curiosity.

8. Software Tester Loves to Learn

The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.

– B. B. King

If you are the type of person who just wants to finish a college and then find an easy job where you do not need to educated yourself ever again, then software testing won’t work for you. The Internet and anything happening there is evolving with the speed of light almost. And you need to keep up. That means you will need to learn new testing strategies, tools, and automation. If you stop learning you will get steam-rolled by somebody who is willing to learn. But please do not take it as a chore. Learning is deeply connected with your curiosity. You will be learning new things and applying them to your project. You will see those tools and automation in action. That is super exciting. learning will help you grow in your career and as a person. So please be open to it. It is worth it!

9. Software Tester’s Motivation

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

– Winston Churchill

This skill is highly connected to curiosity and learning new things. Sure enough, you will also need to work on a team that supports you otherwise you will feel demotivated. On the other hand, you can not expect that you will be motivated every single day. You are not a machine, you are human. Don’t be too hard on yourself if you feel demotivated. Maybe try to pinpoint the moment you lost your motivation. Was it because somebody on your team said something to you? Maybe you felt unappreciated by your employer? Or you are just fed up with your project? In any case, it is important to find the root cause of your lack of motivation. And when you find it, try to ignite it again as they do here.

You can’t ever expect that other people will motivate you to be a great software tester. Remember, you need to do it for yourself usually. Try to find again what you liked about the project when you started to work there. What were you trying to achieve then? What is missing now?

After you work through this for a couple of days and are not able to find your motivation again, then maybe it’s time to find a new software testing job.

10. Software Tester’s Enthusiasm

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

This skill is similarly important as all the other skills above. As much as software testing is sometimes viewed as the entrance into the tech world you should not treat it that way. As much as developers are needed to program the app/software, the qa software testers are needed to make sure the app/software works well and looks good. It is ok if you want to become a developer or product owner or something else later. I want that too. But for the time being, I want to be a good tester, nothing less than that. And you should always strive for the same.

Please let me know if you liked this post and if you feel like I forgot some necessary skills. I am always ready to acquire those.