Originally posted at: https://www.utest.com/articles/5-traits-of-successful-utesters—part-1
The Ability to Cope with constant Change
There are many traits that testers must have in order to be successful. A quick Google search for “traits of a successful tester” will produce several articles on the subject. However in this article series, I wanted to focus on the traits that are of particular importance to uTesters.
At Applause (uTest) our approach to testing is quite unique. Testers who had success at a typical testing shop are not guaranteed to have success here. Conversely, people with no prior testing or even IT experience, often become highly respected and sought after uTesters… providing that have these particular qualities.
This will be a 5-part series and in this Part 1, we are going to discuss the importance of the ability to cope with constant change.
Probably one of the most unique aspects of being a uTester is that we test an incredibly large and ever-changing set of products. Instead of working for one company and testing the same product(s) over and over, uTesters test hundreds of different products for hundreds of customers every day. Some of the top uTesters have literally tested over a thousand different products.
The top uTesters work on several products at any given time. In order to be successful, they need to be constantly analyzing the context that they’re working in. Which product am I testing? What is the state of the product? What is the goal of this cycle? If a uTester fails to test within the correct context, they’ll find that their work provides little or no value.
Just as every product is different, so too are the needs and expectations of every customer. One customer may have extremely specific reporting standards. They require bug titles to follow a detailed format, they have attachment requirements and expect several pieces of additional data. However, the next customer may not have any requirements and is just happy to be receiving bug reports at all.
uTesters need to be able to quickly switch from context to context and from one set of customer expectations to another, often several times per day. This is no simple task, but it’s the first trait all the best uTesters share.