Why are good communication skills so important?
A tester’s professionalism and competence is perceived and judged based upon how they communicate verbally and in writing. As testers, our job is to find bugs so we are constantly the bearers of bad news. If we present this bad news in an ambiguous way or with a bad attitude, the recipient’s natural response may be to “shoot the messenger”. By having professional and accurate communication skills a tester can easily be viewed as a valuable member of the team and not as a “necessary evil” Everyday, testers communicate orally. They talk about the bugs they found, describe them, and discuss the urgency to fix them. They also talk about the progress that they are making on the testing and their opinion of the quality and ship-ability of the product. Testers communicate bugs, test cases, test results, status reports and test reports in writing. They also communicate daily by email. See Tips for more insight into the importance of good communication skills.
