Should a tester be well equipped with technical knowledge?

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Permalink Reply by Ajay Balamurugadas on July 26, 2009 at 5:06pm

Is it mandatory for tester to have technical knowledge?
I feel this question can be answered by every tester with respect to his/her own experience in testing field.

One simple thought that strikes my mind is:
Technology field is not a static field. Yogesh, i hope you agree with me on this point.

Now that technology keeps changing every few months (luckily not every second), any person required to work on that technology would be required to update himself.

So, how can a tester say with confidence that he has complete knowledge on the technology.

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Permalink Reply by Ajay Balamurugadas on July 26, 2009 at 5:25pm

Some bug here, I couldn't edit my reply ...
Ok, continuing...

According to me, a good tester is one who actively scouts(Thanks to James Bach's book : Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar) for valuable information and provides value to the team.

Now, I'm happy with such testers who continuously update themselves on the technology front.

So, according to me it is not mandatory on most of the occasions to have technical knowledge. But that doesn't mean that the tester should never improve/update himself. As long as they update depending on project needs, I'm happy to have them in my team.

Regards,
Ajay

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Permalink Reply by Michel Kraaij on July 26, 2009 at 9:21pm

Having technical insight can come in handy while testing. You can ask better, more explicit questions. Just like having context knowledge or domain knowledge. All has it's advantages. Is it mandatory? No.

Having all this knowledge can give you an advantage over testers which don't have that knowledge. As long as you know when to use it. Having too much knowledge and not knowing how to effectively use it, can also set you back or block you. Just like a known saying: "Sometimes the best solutions are the easiest ones".

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Permalink Reply by kashif ali on July 27, 2009 at 9:48am

it is true that technology is not limited and things are changing day by day, but i must say that i is great to have good sound technical knowledge knowledge(atleast for the prject on which he is working), i mean, the application is based on microsoft framework, he should be aware of architecture of .net frame work,and other related stuff. it will help testers to

1-Ask more intelligent questions to the developer
2-Can write automated scripts , When required,because there are som scenarios which can not be test manually, once i was involved in biztalk server application, there i had to writ samml test pages because i had to invoke webservices and need to verify its response.

There are many other advantages we can have, list can be long.

http://kashifalihabib.blogspot.com

Kashif

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Permalink Reply by Parimala Shankaraiah on July 27, 2009 at 10:46am

Testers may not be explicitly expected to have good technical knowledge. However, I see a lot of advantages to having a good technical knowledge as below:

1. It definetely adds a lot of value when a tester not only knows the BLACK BOX that he/she is testing, but also knows how it would work internally.
2. Understanding the product technically also helps to uncover some unseen defects which could be expensive in the long run of the product.
3. It helps the tester improve their investigation skills and hence report issues and not the sympton of the issues.
4. It motivates developers to have more respect for testers in the overall product lifecycle.

Happy Testing,
Pari - http://curioustester.blogspot.com

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Permalink Reply by Jeroen Rosink on July 27, 2009 at 1:07pm

Hello Yogesh,
Glad to see you made this question broader by mentioning examples which are not only related to coding. I agree with you that testers should be able to teach themselves if the project needs it.

Is technical knowledge needed? You already answered it yourself: it depends. Only not just the testing techniques. Also the organization, the test phases, available skills at other team members, application, etc.

In my opinion there might be several questions which should be answered first:
1. How do you see a tester?
2. When can a tester be valuable to an organization/project?
3. If it is needed, do you demand this knowledge?
4. Is it needed all the time?
5. If knowledge is not available, what would you do with the tester?

Every test phase like unit test, system test, acceptance test need their own skills and knowledge. To me, they need testers with different knowledge. If there are more then one tester in the project and a tester has less technical knowledge, perhaps that tester is better in communication with other members. They can support each other with their skills. Individually they might not lead to success, together they might be strong. If technical knowledge is needed, you have to look at the project. Is that knowledge needed and available? If it is, do you demand that for all testers?

Will technical knowledge help the tester? This depends what the tester thinks about testing, in which direction the tester want to grow.
Personally I can say that a certain level of technical knowledge helped me not only during testing, also with finding information, reading articles. It broaden my view of interest. Did it has to do with testing? Not directly, it helped me to get more excited about this profession, there is still so much to learn :)

Regards,
Jeroen

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Permalink Reply by santosh Siddappa Ganjiyavar on July 27, 2009 at 3:22pm

Hi Yogesh and the rest.. first I am sorry for adding my views very late..

"Should a tester be well equipped with technical knowledge?" is a very vast to answer/understand even..

what I feel is the answer is YES.. let me justify.

But to what extent is the debatable point.

Let me illustrate with a small example,

let us assume we need to test the DVD player having composite/component ports for connecting to TV. If the tester does not know what are these composite/component ports then how to proceed with the testing?

or let me take one more example..

you have one client-server based application need to be installed in both client and server and configured for testing.
If you are not aware of installing and configuring the application then how to proceed with the testing?

let me take one more example..

I have done the testing and I need to send the report and the Excel is the tool used for reporting let us assume.
If I don't know how to put pie chart/put some formulas so that the summary can be made to look better then how will I proceed?

All these three examples will answer the question I guess.

The summary is definitely we need to have the technical knowledge to favor the testing and there is no upper limit for the knowledge. More you know better the work you do.

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Permalink Reply by Michel Kraaij on July 27, 2009 at 8:41pm

"let us assume we need to test the DVD player having composite/component ports for connecting to TV. If the tester does not know what are these composite/component ports then how to proceed with the testing?"

Ehm, read the manual? Check out the picture which displays a composite port and a component port, with the addition "this is what a composite port looks like" and "this is what a component port looks like"?

"you have one client-server based application need to be installed in both client and server and configured for testing. If you are not aware of installing and configuring the application then how to proceed with the testing?"

Let someone else do it for you. It's nice to know the information, so you can be less dependent, but if you don't have the knowledge, you could always ask for it.

"I have done the testing and I need to send the report and the Excel is the tool used for reporting let us assume. If I don't know how to put pie chart/put some formulas so that the summary can be made to look better then how will I proceed?"

I know the above were merely examples. But the basic stays the same. Just ask, (write down) and learn. Or just try! As with all, it's not blocking for testing. The knowledge exists in your team. You just haven't obtained it yet. It could make things easier and maybe even faster if you did. But it's not a necessity (and sometime it's just not even your job to do it). To be honest, i don't memorize every step i take when (preparing for) testing. Some things i write down. Just a simple guideline for the next time.

For example, can i view files with hex-code on a mainframe? Yes i can. I know how to. I wrote it down. Do i know all the specific details about the commands i filled in? Hell no. I just know enough to do my job.

(the last example is not entirely true, because i do know the basics because i did a training, i learned, got interested and now do know the details. But it's just for example purposes ;))

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Permalink Reply by santosh Siddappa Ganjiyavar on July 28, 2009 at 11:01am

Hi Michel Kraaji,

To answer your first reply where you will have the user manual for a product which is under testing/development phase and not in to the production yet? Please know that the user manual/guide will also be under development and verification during testing/development phase of any product.

and answering to your next reply..

If my colleague needs my help every time to create his setup then I would be the last person to have him in my team as all the testers are driven by the time lines to complete the assigned tasks. and creating the test bed would be eating nearly a half day of one person in any domain(of course except few). and as a Manager, I would think that keeping a person to do this job which is of half a day work once in 7 days/15days would be very expensive to the overall cost to the project. and All the Managers select the team members in such a way that with minimum no of people you can execute the project without any hassles then multi skilled people will be preferred.

To take the live example, I have a team member who is good in testing but not interested in reporting in the bug tracking tool and also he is not good in reporting the bug also. In this case I can not have one more person to do this job for him, hence I make him to learn the reporting also and if he is not then I will have no choice in opting for some one else.

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Permalink Reply by sharath on July 28, 2009 at 4:26pm

Thanks for the nice question Yogesh,

I would agree to your statements "In my view, I feel tester should be able to mould himself as per the need of the project. And if at all the project demands that the tester should have some technical knowledge which will help him in testing more effectively and efficiently.
I also think that it really depends on the testing techniques tester is opting."

I feel a tester should explore, invest in learning anything and almost everything like a scripting language, a tool, domain knowledge, technical knowledge, test strategy, required documentation, etc required to accomplish his/her mission.

But is any of these a must always - NO

-Sharath.B
http://testtotester.blogspot.com/

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Permalink Reply by Mohan Bhardwaj on July 28, 2009 at 5:11pm

Hey it was really a hot discussion......

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Permalink Reply by Rafael Sartor on July 28, 2009 at 7:24pm

But is any of these a must always - NO

Just adding a little to this thought. Sometimes not having knowledge about what we are testing might be also interesting. A pre-defined knwoledge might bias our view of the product, to always configure it, or a component of the system it is into, in a 'correct' way for an example. If we don't are still getting to know the product we might be more prone to misconfigure it and expose bugs that probably wouldn't be found otherwise.

There are lots o situations were a person is lead to think that nobody would do something, I already found myself on lots of these, but usually it is the first thing that is done by somebody else. So I always try not to know too much at the beggining and allow myself to make some "mistakes".

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