TL;DR

As everything in Agile software development, software testing is group activity. This post explains, aligned with Black Box Software Testing Foundations course (BBST) (created by Rebecca Fiedler, Cem Kaner and James Bach), how software tester group diversity contributes to successful software development.

The Problem

In software development, there is overal dilemma should software developer be specialist or general practitioner. As always, context is important. Specialization is always needed, otherwise, there would not be software testers in the first place. But expanding this specialization by broadening basic craft skill set is always welcome. That means that you could be expert in databases. but expanding your skills in database tools would come along your basic specialization. These would be overlaps of test group and multi specializations.

Google Calendar Typical Test Group

In previous post we gave project settings for Google Calendar. Here is Google Calendar test group:

• tester skilled with database and calculations (multi specialization)
• bug hunter (risk analysis skill set)
• tool smith
• Startup CEO (domain knowledge)
• Configuration tester
• network issues tester (security and performance)
• writer (test docs)
• group manager

Conclusion

These are just some of software tester roles. You can find comprehensive list in Dr. Cem Kaner Recruiting software testers paper [link].