Tester qualifications/skills

5 years ago I did a research to analyze tester qualifications/skills required. I had a presentation on ICSTES in 2005 to present the analysis and the results. I decided to publish some summary of results here as I believe there is still something to learn.
Note that analysis are based on 3 sources
• My subjective analysis of testing as service
• Test team leaders (3 of them) survey
• Tester pool (25 testers in my company)
Each resource lists qualifications. Lists are combined using formula: 2 points for #1 skill, 1 point for any other valued skill.

There is one conclusion I made that is probably not evident from the picture. Lists were quite different, so were individual answers (see communication row for example). I had a strong feeling that results would be different in a different company. More over a tester that fit one project or special role in a project may not as well fit another.

A few fresh ideas, or what I could learn from it today.
I did a conclusion back then that we need to maintain tester qualification profile (e.g. tester A is great at communication but not as great analyst, while tester B is perfect at documentation) to help assign the right tester to the right project. We never implemented that idea. I do believe that one of the reasons is following: smart people could find a way to use their skills. Tester A may relay on face-to-case communications, while B on documented test review. Maybe C is so smart that could do a perfect testing without sharing his ideas with anyone… The only question is if / how much the boss and the formal process allow tester to use their skills.

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Comment by Ainars Galvans on January 27, 2009 at 4:03pm: What do you mean by "fail to respond to client's queries due to lack of communication skills". Do you mean they can't write a word? I don't mean communication culture (say "thank you", "would you be so kind", etc).
I can't say what it means to any European, but to me it means fruitful cooperation, not only with clients (which are indeed not always required) but also developers and other team members.
One of my favorite books are 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, let me call only 1 out of 5: fear of conflict. I don't hire people who give the right answers even if they sing them in the most beautiful voice...

Sorry for this long comment. It's my communication skill failure. So here is the the answer how do I assign testers. If a tester is poor at communications I will assign him either to a project with detailed formal process and templates to be used defined or to project with a very good test leader who will do all the communications. And I don't really care if communications with client are required.

Comment by Abhishek on January 26, 2009 at 7:13am: Well I am convinced with Ainars comments. I have a question over here. In countries like UK or other European countries, what are the skills the firm looks for or expects from a software tester. Are they really wanna people who have great communication as well as great analytical skills? How do they assign the project to the tester if the project seems to be quite critical and at the same time the client is also working alongwith us? I have seen the situations in India that the people are enough smart to analyse the problems while testing but fail to respond to client's queries due to lack of communication skills.

Comment by Anna Baik on January 22, 2009 at 10:21pm: I'd be curious to see how much the lists changed over time too - do people tend to pick as their #1 skill something that's been a drawback on a recent project?

I think that one problem with tester profiles is compiling them in the first place can be a lot of work, and then you need to keep them up to date.