Software Testing Career Development direction

Software testing career development direction

Recently prepared to study the development of software testing career direction, one is to increase their knowledge, the second is for their own career planning to do a reference, found on the internet a very good stuff, will it tidy up a bit, put it up, for later review.

Software testing career development direction, in general can be divided into management routes, technical routes, management + technical lines. http://blog.csdn.net/damys/article/details/8052010


test the initial stage:
Test engineer, belonging to the primary domain of software testing career, its application scope is the test practitioners in the 3 years of software testing, its main work is according to test supervisor (i.e. direct boss) assigned task plan, write test cases, execute test cases, submit software defects, including the submission of periodic test reports, Participate in the periodic review and so on.


Management + Technical route:
The first is the conventional route, which requires both management and technology, because the industry characteristics of software testing determine this factor: the test engineer up to the Test Director, Test Manager, test director, until the consulting field of higher direction!
Test supervisors are enterprise project-level supervisors, for small and medium-sized software companies can also be enterprise-level executives, belonging to the intermediate development domain, the scope of application is 2-5 years of professional experience of the testing practitioners. Its work is based on the project manager or the Test manager's planning arrangements, the deployment of test engineers to perform module-level or project-level testing, and control and supervise the tracking of software defects, to ensure that each test link and phase of the smooth progress. Strictly speaking, this level is more the Test designer, because the enterprise test process is built by a higher level of test managers or related managers to do, the Test manager is responsible for the specific implementation of the process, and more work is to consider how to conduct more in-depth, comprehensive testing software. The Test manager's creative work content is the test design, and many companies neglect or have no energy to carry out this work content! It should be said that in an enterprise to do 3 years or so test work personnel, it is easy to promote to the position, and the reason for promotion, and personal testing techniques, testing methods, coupled with the test process monitoring and execution of professional quality is closely related!
Test managers are higher-level test managers and belong to the Advanced test direction field. For large and medium-sized software companies, the position is particularly important, and its professional requirements are relatively high, generally suitable for 4-8 years of testing practitioners, in the management and technical capacity of both mature, can be combined with a specific environment to promote to this level. The Test Manager is responsible for the planning and implementation of the overall test work at the enterprise or large project level. In addition to coordinating the entire enterprise-level or project-level testing process, the Test Manager also has to research and explore the different software architectures, test methods under different development techniques, provide guidance and solutions for the team members, and reasonably deploy the human resources of different special tests (such as Business test engineers, Automated test engineer, white box test engineer, performance test engineer), complete testing of the software; in some enterprises, the Test manager also needs to communicate and communicate with the customer, responsible for part of the sales or technical support work.
Test director, the highest field in the general development route, typically in a large or multinational software enterprise, or specificity in a test service company, typically setting up a test director, which is equivalent to the CTO or VP level and is the highest leader in enterprise or group-level testing Control all the testing and testing related resources, manage all the testing and quality work of the enterprise. and its professional requirements, but also technology and management of the dual combination.
Management aspects:
Management-level intermediate domain:
After 1-3 years of routine testing engineers, after the analysis of personality characteristics, if they consider themselves to be a "high management-low skills" type, then want to achieve their own career promotion, to the intermediate development area of the configuration Management engineer, Quality assurance engineer, business Test engineer transformation.
Configuration management (SCM) and quality assurance (SQA) are the key process domains (KPA) in the CMM as well as the necessary roles in modern software engineering, and software testing is an important part of the software development team. Because these two characters in the software engineering in the proportion of the number of people is relatively small, rather than software testing so large and even form the industry, and the most is a career; another social phenomenon is that companies rarely directly recruit configuration management engineers and Quality assurance engineers from the community directly, The usual practice is to select from the existing test staff within the enterprise, and the transformed test engineer becomes SCM or SQA. Analysis of the reasons, we can perceive that SCM, SQA and software testing engineers are concerned about the quality of software similar jobs, the community for configuration management, quality assurance and the definition of work content is not popular, and directly from the social recruitment "0" basis of the people to cultivate, rather than from the software testers to sublimate! In general, both positions are reported to the project manager or the same level manager.
The transformation of configuration management and quality assurance engineers, it is important to change the sense that the general test Engineer's scope of work a large part (not all) is limited to the testing process, and configuration management and quality assurance work for the entire software development process, Both of the professional requirements attach great importance to the establishment of software engineering knowledge system and the implementation of the overall software development process capacity. As the configuration management engineer in addition to the enterprise configuration management process to build and implement, generally involves the management and maintenance of configuration management tools, and quality assurance engineer More work is the software development process control and maintenance, so configuration management of technology requirements slightly higher than the quality assurance.
Business test engineer, defined as the person who is oriented to industry-class software business logic and workflow testing. The current type of software development, a large part of the application of industry-class software, such as ERP, SCM, CRM, OA, telecommunications, finance, finance, embedded, communications, mobile phones, games ... This requires industry-class software testing personnel with industry background, business knowledge, proficiency in the industry workflow. We are more sure of this trend in the recruitment of many test engineers who have been asked to do so in the community, so the so-called existence is the truth, and since there is demand in society, it can be the direction of personal development. And another feature is that the business test engineer's work is mainly black box testing, is a functional category, so the technical requirements are not small, set up some large-scale industry software company's business test engineer salary is rich, but can not understand the technology, because its nature of work decided not need to know a lot of technology! They do not even test the software interface testing-to the regular test engineers to implement, and fully concerned about the business and ease of use of software, due to its deep industry background, can provide the software before the official release of a lot of constructive comments, and these recommendations are software developers to improve product usability, increase customer satisfaction, One of the key factors to open up the market and create profits!

Administrative Aspects Advanced domains:
When the middle-level direction of the management route continues to rise to the advanced domain, it reaches the configuration Management Manager, Quality Assurance Manager, Product Manager, Business Specialist, respectively.
If the configuration Management engineer, quality assurance engineer more focus on the configuration management process, quality assurance process implementation and daily management maintenance, then the configuration Management Manager, Quality Assurance Manager is more focused on the configuration management process, quality assurance process to establish and improve. Generally in small and medium-sized software enterprises, may not have these two roles, and all the configuration management or quality assurance work by the engineer, but large and medium-sized software enterprises to senior configuration Management Manager, senior Quality Assurance Manager Lookout. The larger the software system, the larger the size of the software development team, the higher the probability of problems in the software development process, the more efficient management of the software development process, and the continual improvement of the software quality, is the next urgent need for every software company to overcome its technical concerns!
Business experts, belonging to the industry consulting, consultant role, has been almost out of the testing itself, and more for the enterprise's product requirements analysis, design, development, testing and other aspects of the guidance work, its purpose is to improve the ease of use and stability of software, reduce unnecessary changes in the late requirements. The position is also in the current hot industry of large and medium-sized software enterprises have been established.
Product Manager, this position has been established in many enterprises, it can be said that it is a derivative of the quality Assurance manager, but it is more focused on the software before the product of the QC work, including the software development process, software testing and other aspects of technology and management.

Management Consulting domain:
The highest development domain of the management route is the consulting domain, similar to the technical route expert domain, in the configuration management, the quality assurance, the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, the profession domain achieves the high attainments talented person, they have the rich experience, the Deep Management Foundation, has the foresight to the software engineering vision and the courage, often serves in the professional consultation and the training company , provide IT industry management consulting and training services, driving the software industry forward. At home and abroad a lot of software enterprises for the CMM consulting and implementation of the company, is one of these talent stronghold!

Software Testing Career Development direction