Meeting women in IT!
Interview with the Tester - Meeting women in IT!
What is the tester's job all about? Why should you pay attention to it ? What skills do you need to be able to work in this position? Can anyone re-invent themselves and start their adventure with manual testing? What are the development prospects? Let’s meet the User Acceptance Test (UAT) Analyst from NatWest Group - Karolina Melska will answer these and other questions.
Karolina, how does your typical working day look like?
When it comes to systematic activities, it is most often an analysis of documentation and requirements in the project, writing tests and their execution. I also spend a large part of the day working together with other people responsible for a particular project including project managers as well as with developers. These are some of the examples of the fixed points, but in fact each day looks differently and brings usually new challenges.
Do you have time for self-development on the top of your daily duties?
Fortunately, I have the opportunity to devote some of my time to training and learning new things. It is not a fixed time. If there are moments where the whole team needs to work agains tight deadlines, you simply don’t have much energy for additional learning. However, generally, I’m glad that NatWest actively supports me in acquiring new skills through different internal or external training which are part of my employee development plans which we keep adjusting on a quarterly basis.
What challenges do you face as a tester?
Mainly it is working under time pressure and on multiple projects at the same time. You need to switch context very quickly. Sometimes it is about communication with developers where interpersonal skills are important. Depending on the project, there may also be technical challenges related to the use of new tools or those related with the ability to manage resources. You may face often a challenge when e.g. some functionalities or the environment is not working and we as team need to find a solution.
What skills do you need to work as a tester?
Technical skills required usually vary between companies. Experience with type of projects you have been involved always helps. However, in addition to hard skills, soft skills are very important. The basic ones would definitely include ability to take responsibility, and curiosity. I would also add accuracy, attention to detail, teamwork as well as good analytical thinking or communication skills.
What do you like about your job?
What I like the most is when the projects which I am part of are successfully moving into production. Hence, customers can enjoy new functionalities or improvements. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to be part of projects aimed at improving customer experience. I like fixing things, solving problems, and even though I'm not a developer, we often work together to get to the root cause of problems and come up with potential solutions which is very motivating for me.
In what direction can you develop working as a tester?
Development paths might be different and there are more and more of them. Starting as a manual tester, you can develop into managerial positions such as test manager or project manager, where you manage a team of people and projects. You can continue the specialist path developing towards automation tester, business or test analyst. You can also become a programmer. Experience in testing may also help you if you think of taking developer roles.
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