Soft skills needed in Testing

Luiza Dosa
Adrian Dumitrascu
Bernadett Chiorean-Baja

Soft Skills: Defined

Soft skills refer to a cluster of personal qualities, habits,

attitudes that make someone a good employee and

compatible to work with.
Unlike hard skills, which tend to be specific to a certain type
of task, soft skills are broadly applicable.
Good Soft Skills.
Will help you STAND OUT of the pile of mediocrity

Soft skills vs hard skills

Hard skills will get you an interview but you need soft skills

to get and keep the job.

IQ and EI
In the workplace, most compliments

We live in a society that

measures intelligence (IQ)

through quantifiable metrics.

will deal more with the use of soft

skills (EI Emotional Intelligence)
than your actual knowledge about a
particular situation.
Customers appreciate when you are
pro active regarding their
complaints.

What are the soft skills most in demanded by

software companies?

Soft Skills: Examples

Personal Attributes

Interpersonal Attributes

Optimism

Empathy

Responsibility

Leadership

Sense of humor
Integrity

Communication

Time management
Motivation

Good manners
Ability to teach

Common Sense

Works well with diversity

Self-confidence

Teamwork

Organizational
Skills

Soft Skills

Organizational skills can be termed as a set of skills

that help you achieve your higher goals in life. These
skill sets help you:
plan
implement the procedures
monitor growth and ultimately achieve your set

goals.

Organizational
Skills

Soft Skills

Some of the examples of organizational skills

are:
Focus oriented
Prioritization
Timelines driven

Soft Skills

Time Management and Effort

Prioritization

When we talk about time management, it's not the time that we
actually manage. We manage ourselves, our tasks, so that we make
the most of our time.

Soft Skills

Time Management and Effort

Prioritization

Consider the instances below:

A tester is involved in Exploratory testing. In such a case, a tester may be testing, creating test cases,

documenting results, and creating test metrics all in a day. Such situations call for managing time efficiently.
A Tester may be involved in more than one project or modules at the same time. The priority of work may

vary. Such a situation is common and needs to give special attention to effort prioritization even before
venturing into multiple projects. Collect all the information that helps one prioritize the efforts.

Soft Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Theres a lot of buzz around interpersonal skills but

what exactly does these skills mean?
Interpersonal skills are also called communication skills
or people skills.

Interpersonal skills are the

skills that a person uses to
interact with other people.

Soft Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Interpersonal skills that are essential to your communication dialogue.

Look
Ask
Listen
Comprehend
Learn
Identify

Soft Skills

Interpersonal Skills

Lets look at some way to improve interpersonal skills.

Smile
Be Observant Watch whats happening in the lives of others.
Be Appreciative Say thank you
Active Listening Restate what the other person says to ensure you know the meaning.
Bring People Together Create the type of environment where others want to work together.

End User Empathy & Understanding of

Business Strategy
Always question!
Why?
What?
Why is this feature being

introduced?
Why is this designed in a certain
way?
What problem is the product trying
to solve?
What`s the corporate goal of the
business?

Knowledge sharing and Mentoring

Ability to teach

Take time to explain what youve learned over the

years. If someone on your team can benefit from
your mistakes, be sure to share them.

Communication & Assertivness

Why are there bugs in a software?

Communication failure:
Miscommunication
Lack of communication
Erroneous communication during software

development

Thank you!

Thank you!
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Comunicare Eficienta Copyright Viorel Elefterescu
Soft Skills and Software Development: A Reflection from Software Industry (Faheem Ahmed, Luiz Fernando Capretz,
Salah Bouktif, Piers Campbell)