UI Testing -
General testing knowledge - manual experience is good because you will still being doing it even with automation handy
General programming knowledge - need some experience with decisions, looping, error checking - doesn't matter what language
Customer interaction knowledge - support or sales or anything that put you in front of the customer so you can be their advocate here
Systems analysis - be able to create test cases from little information and be able to tell good documentation from bad
Marsha_R wrote:
UI Testing -
General testing knowledge - manual experience is good because you will still being doing it even with automation handy
General programming knowledge - need some experience with decisions, looping, error checking - doesn't matter what language
Customer interaction knowledge - support or sales or anything that put you in front of the customer so you can be their advocate here
Systems analysis - be able to create test cases from little information and be able to tell good documentation from bad
I like what you say about manual testing. One thing that too many test automaters get caught up in is simply writing the code and forgetting that they are actually writing TESTS. I have a couple of folks who take test cases written by someone else and just go through the actions... with no check points, if/then checks, etc. It just goes through the steps. I have to constantly remind them "This is a TEST. How do you know it passed?" and that an "object not found" error is not a good measure of pass/fail.
tristaanogre lol my interns do that - they are computer science students and they will automate anything I ask but writing a test case is still a foreign language even after a year of this
Marsha_R What I have found, many times, is that people are brought in as automation folks simply because they know how to click a record button. They have never written a test case before in their life, they don't know how to code in any code language, and they don't know much about the internal workings of computer software. Automated testing is a skilled task. It really is a cross discipline career. You need to be BOTH a developer AND a tester and have the mindsets of both. The creative, logical mind of a developer and the observer, particular detailed mind of a tester. And add a bit of deviousness in to REALLY be a good tester. Taking a raw college graduate/student and telling them "Here, go write an automated test" is not doing you or them any good.
