A Wake-up call to testers….

Technology is growing at a rocket speed and thus the required skill sets of an employee are increasing. The demand is not only for development teams but also essential for testing teams. Organizations are currently investing in training for their employees to adopt trending technologies. Since the advent of AI and ML, most of the employees started to feel a challenging environment if they don’t acquire the new skillset actively as per the industry demand. The same case seems to be valid for testers. Most of the testers still follow a traditional approach to test their application. However, the aspect of applications is itself dynamic nowadays which needs a different testing methodology. The testing of complex applications seems to be very time consuming and difficult, thus it also needs automation in place.

The world is constantly moving forward with Machine Learning(ML), Artificial Intelligence(AI), Internet of Things(IoT) and lot more technologies including Blockchain and Big Data. Systems are being developed by converging all these technologies and makes it challenging to test. Without proper technical skills, a Tester might find it very difficult to test such systems.

The question surrounded is how to be competitive and learn new skills as a tester. To answer it, a tester

1. Must adopt a technical mindset. One must be aware about the basics of at least one programming language on which their system are built upon. It will help them to build the technical knowledge and also able to know about the technical in-how of the application flow and the architecture of it.
2. Must develop different testing strategies. Different applications need a different test strategy for e.g. IOT may have a altogether different test strategy than the AI based systems or ML based decision systems, so the tester must ensure that they follow the best testing plans for their application. This doesn’t need to be a same as a traditional way to tests. Also, they should be able to reduce their test timelines with the help of automation and continuous testing. Following shift-left approach for API with test automation will reduce so much of time and helps to release the API as quickly as possible.
3. Must acquire the latest skillset. A tester should always be updated with the latest technology. Tester should be adaptable with the changes and should move in the forward direction. Following traditional approach or being a pure functional tester will make them obsolete which in future will have very low demand. Thus, it’s a must to acquire the latest skills like Jenkins for continuous integration/testing, JMeter for performance, Selenium for Web UI automation, Appium for Mobile APP automation.
4. Must be aware of technologies fundamentals. Nowadays, the organizations are working on ML, AI and IOT. These technologies are very complex in nature and have a different fundamentals than the traditional technologies. So, Tester must ensure that the fundamentals and terminologies of these technologies are well versed.
5. And last but not the least Must have a broader mindset. Having broader mindset makes people adapt to changes. This is very necessary for people who are very stringent with old methodologies and finds difficult to adapt new ways to test application.

What would be your way to be consistent and competitive with respect to the fast moving technologies and are difficult to test. Please do respond on this article and share it with your colleagues.