5 Tips for Budding Quality Assurance Engineers

QA engineers are therefore essential to the software development life cycle (SDLC). Are you thinking about becoming one? Then you have come to the right place. Here you will find the crucial skills and various suggestions needed to become a successful quality control analyst.

What are the three main skills of a quality control analyst?

A QA analyst needs more than just technical skills and knowledge about development processes, testing methodologies, and programming. There are other soft skills that all great QA engineers possess, including these top three:

1. Critical thinking
2. Flexibility
3. Social skills

A solid QA tester needs to know how to approach a product to create as many “what if” scenarios as possible. This is only possible through critical thinking, a skill that allows the quality control engineer to think from the customer's perspective to anticipate potential problems and devise ways to resolve them.

Flexibility is also an essential skill for any member of a quality assurance testing company. This is because QA developers will need to apply different testing tools and techniques depending on the project at hand. So, they not only need to know these tools and techniques, but also be versatile enough to seamlessly jump from one to another.

Finally, social skills cover other things – mainly collaboration and communication skills. A QA engineer needs to be “more social” because their role will have them talking to developers, managers, and C-level executives. Thus, they need to know how to communicate with others to ensure everyone is on the same page in terms of quality.

Some suggestions for quality control beginners

Here's what you need to keep in mind.

1. Have a deep understanding of the different life cycles

You've certainly heard about the software life cycle. But knowing him by name is not enough. You need to know all its phases, from requirements analysis to testing and maintenance. This is because software QA services can offer improvements to the entire process, not just the testing phase.

In addition to the SDLC, you should also know the other two life cycles that are essential for quality control to work. On the one hand, you have the testing lifecycle, the activities involved in the testing process itself. On the other hand, there is the bug lifecycle, which involves the specific process that occurs when someone encounters a bug. A great quality control analyst knows these 3 life cycles by heart.

2. Learn the types of bugs

This is the role you want to play in software development, but it's worth repeating, especially since you'll have a hard time identifying bugs early in your QA career. There are very specific types of bugs that you need to know about so you can better report them to the rest of the team. Detailed information about bugs is extremely important, so the more you know, the better.

Aspects like functionality, responsiveness, design, syntax, performance and many other things can introduce bugs that you will need to report. Of course, you'll learn more about bug types as you work and gain more experience, but you definitely can't start from scratch. You need to have a solid theoretical background about bugs at the beginning of your career.

3. Improve your bug reporting

Speaking of bugs, it's one thing to know them so well that you can identify them quickly, but it's another thing entirely to know how to report them properly. When reporting bugs, you will have to make your communication skills shine as you will need to explain bugs to developers in the simplest way so that developers can understand and replicate what you are reporting.

It's not just a matter of semantics either. You need to be as complete and detailed as possible in your reports to avoid back-and-forth and guesswork from developers. This specificity starts right in the report title and continues with the bug description. Furthermore, whenever you can, include a video or image that clearly shows the problem, as this will be very helpful to the development team.

4. Develop task management skills

Since you're just starting out in software testing and QA, you might not think about task management – ​​you'll be more focused on technical skills! This is understandable, but you shouldn't leave task management aside. Given that QA processes will allow you to manage tasks from development to delivery, knowing how to do it can have a significant positive impact on how you get things done.

Even if you already have experience with a project management platform like Jira or Wrike, go further and learn the theory. This way, you will be able to adapt to any new platform you use, as you will have a better understanding of the concepts that serve as the basis for these platforms.

5. Have a basic understanding of UI elements

This final tip may seem strange, since you probably didn't expect to know something as seemingly different as user interfaces. Still, your QA work will eventually put you in front of software where you'll have to perform UI testing – and your job will be much easier if you have a basic understanding of UI concepts and elements.

This means you will have to learn HTML and CSS elements as well as design terms including font size and color, padding, navigation, and many others. All of these things will help you better analyze the software you will be working on and you will have stronger bug reporting skills – something the development team will love you for.

The path to becoming an expert QA developer