Monday, February 19, 2007

Test Personality Traits

I've begun to wonder what affect personality traits have in testing. The main question I pose to you is: are there specific personality traits that one should look for in good testers? This isn't to say that there aren't people who are excellent testers who have personality traits that aren't amiable to testing, but I'm looking for some generic pattern.

Take cynicism. Cynical people could be described as untrusting. I think it could be argued that this is a good trait to have in a tester. If by nature one does not trust the very inputs, outputs, data flows, and processes of a system system under test, it is possible that one could find more problems, assuming that there is proper motivation to do so.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, what about optimists? If you by nature are a very trusting person, would you unknowingly overlook problems due to your sunny outlook? Or is it possible to seperate your innate optimism from the technical job at hand?

You can probably already read my biases in the writing above, but I'm curious what the world at hand thinks. I'm not suggesting that hiring people should be based on personality traits, especially since I think it is impossible to get a good feel for someone's personality in 4-5 hours; but perhaps, just maybe, it should be taken into account.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I agree with you. If same cynical test manager tries to hire then how could he come to the conclusion of himself to hire a candidate as a pessimist he never ever get a good candidate.. Its a lighter part of it :)