Software tester competency matrix

In China, software testing has gone through a rough development path. It has never been taken seriously and no positions have been set up, but now it is taken more and more seriously. The recruitment market is getting hotter and hotter. Colleges and universities have also begun to set up software testing majors and pay attention to software testing. In the era of Internet+, the seller's market no longer exists. The competition between various software has become a fierce reflection of capital and market. No product dares to "use it or not". After all, the cost of marketing is not low. If it is because of the quality of the software, It is not easy to be abandoned by customers, and the losses will be quite heavy.

In the current market, taking Shenzhen as an example, according to statistics from Zhiyouji, in the past 30 days, the recruitment market demand for software testing has been 32,766 positions, which is twice the number of software development positions. From here we can conclude: There is a huge job gap for software testers. However, the capabilities of software testers on the current market are uneven, there is a lack of high-level candidates, and a large number of junior-level candidates flood the market, resulting in a large personnel base, large market demand, and greater difficulty in recruitment. Therefore, a more realistic and effective way should be to improve the capabilities of junior-level software testers, so that more software testers can reach advanced or even senior levels, achieving a three-way win-win situation for individuals, enterprises and industries.

Here we will talk about the competency matrix of software testing. From the three dimensions of technical ability, project ability and business ability, we will discuss the ability values ??from junior to advanced to senior level.

From an evolutionary perspective, being able to make and use tools was the watershed in the evolution of early apes into humans. It is of course also the essential difference between humans and other animals. Of course, in software testing, being able to make tools and use tools is also a basic label for measuring the technical capabilities of software testers.

Strictly speaking, there are no software testers who cannot use tools. Even if it is purely a manual test of "confirming eyes", at least it can use Windows operating system or at least use browser. These are all tools.

Here we use the following factors to measure the technical capabilities of software testers:

Let us take a look at the matrix corresponding to software testers at each level.

Project capabilities reflect the adaptability to IT project management, the ability to reflect one's own value in actual projects, and help the project team deliver high-quality products.

Project abilities are often not obtained through learning alone. You must improve yourself through long-term practice and summary. The author has seen many software testers who have been doing the same thing for ten years, but they are actually quite pessimistic. After working for ten years, the project capabilities accumulated are equivalent to the level on the first day. This is a bit exaggerated, but there are indeed many similar people.

We list the indicators and factors of project capabilities to help more practitioners have better directions and avoid the occurrence of "ten years the same day".

Here we use the following factors to measure the project capabilities of software testers:

Business capabilities reflect the ability to analyze and understand user stories (requirements) and be able to fully Understand the business process of the product, outline the user behavior, and confirm the acceptance criteria through the analysis of the business process.

Some friends may question, why should we consider business capabilities? Isn’t there a requirements analyst (BA)? Isn’t there a requirement specification (SPEC)?

A qualified software tester should be able to analyze requirements reasonably, quickly and efficiently. The ability and level of analysis and understanding of requirements determine the height of your work, right? If you can only stay in the aspects of "input box" and "does it look good", then your testing level is only at the entry level? Because of your job, can your parents also replace you?

Here we use the following factors to measure the business capabilities of software testers:

In the above three dimensions, we briefly elaborated the capability matrix of software testing. In fact, it is not It is difficult to see that problem-solving skills are particularly important. In each dimension, senior-level descriptions have strong problem-solving abilities.

In this article, we briefly analyze the three dimensions of technology, project and business, hoping to help everyone who is engaged in software testing. In addition, your discussions are very welcome. If you have other ideas, please feel free to communicate with the author: liu.tingli@qq.com.

If there are any shortcomings, please point them out and we will make progress together.