6 top soft skills for QA

Not all skills needed to be a good QA are technical. In the long run, the lack of so-called “soft” skills costs the team in general and QA engineer in particular more expensive than the lack of technical knowledges. So what are the key soft skills you should develop to become good QA Engineer?

Willingness to learn and quick learning outcomes

I guess the first and the most important point does not need much explanation. But still good to highlight that technology is changing every single day. New development solutions/frameworks, new management methodologies, new testing strategies, new tools always appear. And that’s thing which makes IT professions so fascinating. But this also means that to be a professional you should never stop learning the latest tools and continuously train yourself as QA.

Know how to ask the right questions

It goes without saying that first days on a new project is difficult and overwhelmed. You are expected to understand the requirements and the logic of product functionality in short terms.
So it is absolutely important thing to be able to clarify all inaccuracies your met during first exploratory testing, understand meaning of all terminology used in a team, find out how processes are built, etc. Some of these points could not be solved by yourself only and you need to ask your team-mates.
At the same time it is worth remembering that everyone has own tasks and does not have much time to answer poorly defined and indistinct questions. So your questions should be clear, prioritized and polite.

Know how to listen

This point is related to the previous one. Along with asking questions you should be able to listen without interrupting, hear, heed and understand what your colleagues mean/need/highlight. Listening ability helps to build effective communication, clearly understand requests, avoid re-asking and tickets ping-pong, detect and even prevent problems.

Personal time management and task prioritization

QA engineer are often expected to perform the most urgent tasks implementation of which can cause neglection other tasks that need to be also fulfilled. Another case - tasks can be endless but still must be completed. Keeping yourself organized and ability to set priorities in correct way help work efficiently and reach success in tasks solving.

Critical Thinking

For QA Engineer critical thinking is super important. Desire to figure out the root of the problem is usually highly valued. Moreover you should be ready to argue and defend your opinion but remember that you should be flexible enough to drop it if business needs

Ability to express thoughts/requests in plain language

During formulating of problem statements, test cases, task definitions you should always use clear unambiguous and wordings. They should be detailed, but should not have redundant information. This skill helps to create useful, easy to understand and navigate documentation and also to avoid misunderstanding and loss or distort of information.