Beyond Testing: The Importance of Technical Testing Skills for Enhancing Your Career
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“Technical testing is not writing test automation script to mimic user.”
It’s no secret that the software industry is in a constant state of upheaval. New technologies are emerging and old skills are becoming obsolete at an alarming rate. In order to succeed in this constantly-changing ecosystem, you need to be able to adapt and pivot quickly. Traditional software testing is the new frontier for the modern software professional. It requires a unique blend of problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and technical know-how. It’s an essential component of your career and not just for software engineers with a passion for testing. This blog will explore why technical testing is so important for software professionals, what you can do to get started, and the top reasons and skills you need to pursue a technical testing career.
What is Technical Testing?
Technical testing is a way of testing software by treating the AUT (application under test) more than a black box. It’s a subset of tasks or activities a tester may indulge in during testing. Typically, technical testing includes but is not limited to querying databases or testing individual components like APIs, writing scripts to automate some test activities which can complement other testing activities like creating quality test data for complex testing scenarios.
Why is Technical Testing Important?
The most obvious reason to be interested in technical testing is that the field has been growing by leaps and bounds in recent years. There is a huge shortage of technical test specialists across the globe, which means that companies are not able to secure technical talent during boom times. With a fast-growing industry and a shortage of technical talent, there is a good chance that you’ll find yourself in a technical testing role sooner than you think. The most important reason, though, is that today’s teams are more technical and most of the roles can be interchangeable in a team. Having a technical tester will not only provide flexibility in the team’s planning but also help in reducing repetitive tasks by writing small scripts. Technical testing allows you to explore your own interests and discover what you love to do.
Technical Testing: The Skills You Need
Technical testing is all about breaking down complex systems and figuring out how they work. Technical skills are essential for any software professional, but they are especially important for software testers. You need to have a strong understanding of how systems work, how they are built, and how they interact with other systems. When you’re a technical tester, you’ll be responsible for a variety of different roles. You’ll be expected to come up with specific solutions to solve specific issues, which means you should have a thorough understanding of how the software works and how to break it down. This can be as simple as having an in-depth knowledge of the product you’re testing or as complicated as designing your own system.
Top 4 Skills You’ll Develop as a Technical Tester
You’ll have a thorough understanding of how the software works and how to break it down. This can be as simple as having an in-depth knowledge of the product you’re testing or as complicated as designing your own system.
Problem-solving skills: The best technical test engineers are problem-solvers. When your team encounters a problem, you need to come up with a solution. You may not be able to solve the problem yourself, but you can help your team to come up with the best possible solution.
Critical thinking skills: Obviously, you’re going to be tasked with a lot of technical problems that involve software systems, but not all of them. Some of your problems will be more complicated than others and you need to be able to decide which ones are worth spending your time on and which aren’t. This also ties back to problem-solving because you need to be able to determine whether a problem is important enough to solve.
Communication skills: Although you’ll be expected to break down a lot of systems and solve a lot of problems, you also need to be able to talk about them. If you can’t explain what the problem is, how you broke it down, or how to solve it, then you might as well not have tried. You also need to be comfortable with both written and spoken communication.
Coding & Logic skills: Some technical problems you’ll encounter may involve writing scripts in multiple languages and on multiple platforms, which means you’ll need to be skilled to handle these tasks.
Bottom line
Beyond testing, technical testing as a career offers a lot of flexibility, a great income, and the opportunity to work with different industries. Technical testing skills require constant learning and self-development. It's a never-ending journey so this may not be suited for everyone.
