Quality of a Good Teter

What qualities & skills we looking for in a Good Tester?

Although technical skills, degrees, diplomas are quite useful, however "The better the soft skills, the better the tester is". Some of the soft skills, which are crucial for testers are:

1) Good Communication: This is one of the most important skills. A tester must be frank enough to ask questions to find out what needs to be done. A good tester can’t afford to be shy. He must be able to interact even with unknown persons, frankly & pleasingly. Communication here refers to a dialog or both way communications. A good tester need not be talkative, but must have a great stamina to be a good listener as well. During discussions with others he should be able to capture all the requirements as to what needs to be done, and he should be able to extract all the project requirements. This requires a great deal of listening skills.
2) Great Patience: Usually testers face substantial resistance from the developers. Developers tend to develop some sort of superiority complex of being more knowledgeable than testers in coding. Thus for being successful in a career in testing, a tester should be patient enough to endure the discussions patiently & should not take any punch personally. Testing is usually a job full of extremes. Sometime the tester may engaged in some boring / repetitive task, while all of a sudden he can face great pressure to meet some project related important deadline. Hence for a success in the career as tester, the tester must be able to develop an attitude of a thorough professional who doesn’t get moved under odd circumstances whatsoever it may be.

3) Perseverance: A good tester is the one who has a lot of perseverance & he doesn’t give up. A successful tester is the one who develops an attitude of proving that the system does not work. He is a person who remains hungry for bugs & doesn’t get satisfied after finding 3 or 4 bugs.

4) Analytical: A Tester usually comes across situations where he goes fully blank & needs to decipher as to what is to be tested. In most of the cases, testers will not find proper documentation or specifications which could be a start point for them; hence he needs to use his analytical skills to decipher the requirements as to what is to be tested. A good tester is the one, who under such circumstances tries to find out the facts to ascertain as to what needs to be tested. His good communication skills become quite helpful in such situations.

Few additional attributes are helpful in undertaking a career in testing.

a) Good technical skills like some qualification in IT or some good testing training.

b) A background of software development.

c) Skill of SQL so that he can write queries and do some background testing without having to wait for someone else to do it for him.
d) Development skills which essential to become an Automation Testers.