Fake Testers or Unskilled Testers?

Sajjadul Hakim’s recent post Masters of Illusion - Fake Testers (part 1) has mentioned some important attributes of a Tester or Test Manager and categorize those testers as ‘fake testers’ who don't have such attributes available. A wonderful post, I really enjoyed reading that post. In the follow up comment Monirul Islam asked couple of important questions, part of comments are “…..Is it something like that when a tester is identified as a fake tester she is completely valueless to her company? Should the company terminate her as soon as possible like we do in the case of fake money?”. His comments make me think about the fact and by this post i’m trying to answer his questions. Before reading further of this post you may interested to read original post and comments from here: Masters of Illusion - Fake Testers (part 1)

@Monirul, you have asked important questions where you indicated to all testers, not only test managers, and that should be because this is a generic problem in BD but not for the test managers only. Here I like to share my thoughts based on my own experiences and ofcourse considering BD context (may not same in other countries):

• There are very few testers in BD with the mentioned attributes (especially demonstration skill) but it doesn't mean that we don't have enough skill testers or potential testers. In BD, there are many good and potential testers but their demonstration and communication skill is not good enough hence feel shy to demonstrate on publicly.

• Reasons for the above are, many BD testers didn't get proper guideline/instruction from Seniors/Team Leads/Managers. Also BD testers got hardly any training on testing (corporate or public).

• Considering the above, i'm not interested to call them as 'fake testers' rather i would like to call them as 'unskilled testers' or 'incomplete testers' or even 'uneducated testers' whereas many of them are potential enough.

So, my answer to the both questions is, NO. Those testers are not valueless to the company instead they can be valuable to the company and apparently they should not be terminated rather they need to be guided properly, trained up by expert (not only by his/her so called Test Manager cause there's very few Managers in BD who have such skill, also many Test Managers required such training and guidance by the expert). So, public workshops/trainings are very much demanded in BD context.

According to my understanding and practices (many of you may have some other ideas or practices), BD testers also need to do the following to increase knowledge and skill:

• Do testing as much as possible even after becoming Team Leader or Manager.

• Learn and think about testing & test ideas.

• Participate on Weekend Testing (also mentioned on the original post of Sajjadul Hakim)

• Join on uTest and participate on uTest test cycles as much as possible which will help to increase testing skill, communication skill, to build network with testers around the Globe and in addition you will earn money for your each approved bug and test cases. Don't forget to participate on uTest forum discussion to know more.

• Follow famous testing blogs regularly and also read some previous posts of them as your interest (some famous testing blogs are listed in this blog)

• Participate and/or read online discussion regularly on the several testing forums.

Dear readers, please share your experiences and practices which definitely will be helpful for BD testers.

Enjoy testing, enjoy learning!!

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