Are testers prepared for the 21st century (skills)?

We are living in a century of fast digital changes that influence everything in our society. In fact, we as testers are well aware of these changes. But are you prepared for the next step? Quite some wise people were thinking: what kind of skills do you need to be ready to deal with those fast changes? They gave it a name; the 21ste century skills. 

We are wondering to what extent you are already apply those skills or how have you thought about getting those skills?

For that reason, we are interested in your stories so that other people can be inspired by you or can learn from you? 

The skills can be divided into four main categories: 

The ability to look at problems in deeper and different ways by evaluating the possibility of failure also, finding gaps between expectations and  reality. The goal here to find the unknown unknown by having an analytical mind and linking learning across your testing steps. 

James Bach says that “Testing is an infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous in order to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.” 

Testing is not a single step in the process, it’s a whole team task shared between all the development team and business side. In fact teams of people have a collective intelligence independent from the individual one and greater than the total of these parts. 

Sharing your opinions regarding the software you are testing, be curious asking questions about the software, proposing your ideas and solutions.

The ability to come up with new and useful ideas while exploring the software and innovation is the successful implementation of creative ideas, this includes both incremental and radical change in systems and products to deliver better quality.

As you can see in the picture below there are some subcategories underneath every category.

We hope they will inspire you to share your experiences per category where you can answer one or both of the questions

  • How do you apply the 21st-century skills in your work?
  • How do you think you can apply the 21st-century skills in your work?

We will bundle a selection of all your stories in our e-book “Are testers prepared for the 21ste century (skills)?”

#21stSkills4Testers