Domain knowledge for Software Testers


Hi Reader,

Hope you're having a great day!

This is my Second Newsletter article on this platform.

In my First newsletter I shared my journey as Fresher into IT industry and getting into the Software Testing role. You can read it later from the previous newsletter articles.

In this article, why I am talking about Domain knowledge, you might be wondering.

Although we talk about learning Technical Skills most of the times, when we work in a Software Project - we need to understand the Business terminologies, what does the Customer / End User utilize the features that we develop for them.

So, it is important to understand the Domain knowledge, before understanding the Functional Business workflows of the Software Product. This helps to write good Testcases to cover positive and negative workflows.

Focusing only on Automation Tech Skills and ignoring domain knowledge won't help while working in any project.

If you aspire to move to Abroad opportunities, if there are possibilities in your project. Then being very good in Functional testing and also having hands-on with technology helps.

In 2014, I got to work at Client location (Mumbai) in a Credit Insurance Company for 2 months.

I got this opportunity because I got good understanding of the Software Product workflows End to End, and I had seen many QAs getting other country opportunities within the organization at HCL. Although this depends on project requirements as well.

I would recommend being a Good Techno Functional Tester, you would learn this anyways as you grow your experience in the journey. Automation Testing skills does add value to Testing profile, but while working in a Company we have to be good at Manual + Automation testing skills.

One important point, you could mention in Resume clearly explicitly about your Domain knowledge and experience in various projects. This has helped me to get opportunities and also feel relevant when the Hiring Manager of the project can relate to the Domain expertise. It helps sometimes to get shortlisted and proceed with further rounds of Interviews.

You can refer to my Custom Resume Template, where I have mentioned one point in Experience Summary

· Knowledge of domains like Retail, Banking, Insurance, HVAC and Semiconductor.

In my 13.5 years of Work Experience working at 5 different Software Companies, I had worked across multiple Domain projects. It is important at initial phase of joining new project, to ask questions and get documentation, Knowledge Transfer of the Domain we are going to work on.

Functional knowledge helps in Automation Testing as well, to add only Important scenarios as first priority.

We don't want to Automate every trivial feature, which might not be used repeatedly by the Users.

Some Traits or Superpowers of a Software Tester:

1) Asking Questions and Asking Clarifications. Don't Assume anything.

2) Curiosity - be open mindset to learn new concepts

3) Think like End User - Test Data in Real world would be very different

Just an example for End user stuff - what kind of Application access he needs (Admin, General user, etc.)

What do you think about this topic of "Domain Knowledge for Software Testers".

Do reply to this email your thoughts.

I have posted about Resume Templates initiative on LinkedIn, few days back.

You can download the Resume Templates from the Google Driver (Open in Incognito mode).

Google Drive location to download

Let's meet in the next Newsletter article.

You can read the Previous Newsletter articles here.

Best wishes,

Swaroop Nadella

Test Automation Engineer, Tech Educator, YouTuber

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Swaroop Nadella

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Swaroop Nadella

I'm a Software Tester, Test Automation Engineer with 13+ years of Experience and Tech YouTuber who loves to share knowledge with Software Testers. No Spam, Unsubscribe anytime.

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