A while ago I answered the following question on SearchSoftwareQuality.com’s Ask The Software Quality Expert: Questions & Answers.

Can you give me five or six bullet points for a performance tester and what we need to be looking for when hiring a new person?

Here is a clip from my answer:

1. Can they test (analysis skills, techniques, planning, etc.)?


2. Can they model (UCML, UML, various diagrams, concept modeling, etc.)?


3. Do they know math (probability and statistics)?


4. Do they know hardware, networks, and application servers (servers, routers, switches, JVMs, configurations, etc.) ?


5. Do they know tools (HTTP Spy, Etherial, LoadRunner, Robot, RPT, OpenSTA, etc.) ?


6. Can they code (not tool-code, but code-code)?

You can find the full posting here.

A while ago I answered the following question on SearchSoftwareQuality.com's Ask The Software Quality Expert: Questions & Answers .

I have a hard time getting our programmers to work closely with me. They have a low opinion of the value I can contribute to the project and have little respect for the value of testing in general. How can I get them to see that not all testers believe in just documentation and show them that I can help them write better software?

Here is a clip from my answer:

I have a game I play with programmers. I call it five bugs in five minutes. It's been I while since I've done it (you have to be sitting close to the people doing the programming), but I still get to play it every now and then.

[...]

It allows both of us to grow in a fun little competitive way. It certainly raises my status in their community. And most important, it gets them coming to me when they finish programming something, because they know I can help them write better software.

You can find the full posting here.

I also wrote about that game in the most recent issue of AST Update. You can find it here.