Tea China Computer Market Forecast Report 2008 has been released recently. It showed that in the first three quarters of 2007, the software industry in China recorded sales revenue of $50 billion, 23.6% more than pcp, accounting for 10.95% of the sales revenue of the entire the electronics and computer industry. As the software market matures, people have ever higher expectations for software functionality, quality, and reliability. In October 2005, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security formally included the computer software product tester (software test engineer) as one of the new professions. In just two years, software testing has become a powerful dark horse in the software industry.
Steady rising state
“In the early 1990s, the software industry was still in its infancy in China. Most software projects were very simple, the entire code writing and development process could be handled by a single person.” As competition in the industry intensified, software companies gradually evolved from “small men’s band shops” to software engineering cooperations. Although the division of labor could improve software development efficiency and functional varieties, it also leads to an increasing number of errors between modules and deterioration of qualities,” said Mr. Wang Yazhi of CONCEPT Information Technology Ltd., a major software development company in Beijing.Deteriorating quality would not only harm a software company’s competitiveness, but could also lead to massive economic losses for software users or even personal injuries such as medical accidents.
As China’s software companies continue to prosper, software companies are also increasingly appreciating the importance of software testing. Many large and medium-sized software companies have started hiring professional staff to handle software testing. Ms. Ran Chunjuan, former test manager at Wuhan Superidea Technology Ltd, said that “At Superidea, the ratio of software testers to developers is 1:4. Although it is still well below the international best practice of 1:1. , it’s still a huge improvement over the 1:8 of a few years ago.”
Industry experience appreciated
In addition to increasing the number of software testing staff, many companies are also demanding higher quality staff, especially in areas of professional testing expertise and thinking ability. “A tester without professional training can still develop 3-5 test methods, but not necessarily catch bugs. Even if bugs are discovered, they may not be able to express the issues in the proper languages, which could increase the workload Those good Trained testers can develop 10-20 test methods such as limit value analysis, equivalence classes, and cause-and-effect diagrams to best uncover any bugs Professional testers can also articulate test documents tests in standardized languages, which improves recovery rates from software problems,” said Liu Fei, a former test manager at Qualcomm. Many companies in China have now set up independent testing departments, working together with R&D departments.
As enterprise software testing knowledge deepens, the scope of work of test personnel expands from the system testing phase to the unit and integration testing phases. “This requires software testers to have a deep understanding of the businesses a product is involved in,” said a test manager at Founder Group, one of China’s largest software companies, “for example, when we test software for banking applications, we have to understand the specific users in the bank first. Some operators only use keyboards in the office, but if we don’t know about this and design it as a mouse-friendly control, banks won’t buy, no matter how good the software works.” Therefore, the status of software testers who possess technical expertise and knowledge of customer demand could be predicted to further improve.
A vendors market
“The software testing industry is in a growth stage,” said Professor Zheng Renjie, a software testing expert. The current large market for software testers is mainly due to the rapid development in the software industry itself, “enterprises are demanding better quality software, which in turn has stimulated the demand for software testers. market demand hence a shortage of talent.”
At present, the shortage of software testing talent in China has exceeded 200,000 and is reaching the threshold of 300,000. According to statistics, the total supply of software testers from IT training institutions across the the country is less than 10,000 per year, so you can anticipate that the talent shortage for testing could last another 5-10 years. At the same time, the talent shortage has served as a lever to test pay. According to a 51Job.com compensation report in China, the starting salary for software test engineers ranges from $400-$650 per month, and could increase to $1,200-$1,650 for engineers with 2-3 years of experience, higher pay. to that of many developers with similar years of service. As the talent supply shortage continues in 2008, software tester compensation is looking for more gains.
education and training
The shortage of software testers in China has not only raised pay levels, but has also created a boom for educational and training institutions. Even two years ago, several prominent IT professional training institutions realized the importance of software testing positions and organized some domestic and international software testing experts to jointly develop training courses, which they have successfully cultivated. many software testing talents in the last two years. years. Currently in China, in addition to overseas recruitment and internal company training, external vocational training is also an important channel for the production of software testers, amounting to 12% of the total talent supply. As companies pay more attention to labor cost control, more professional talents are expected to come from external training institutions.
While professional IT training is booming, tertiary education institutions have also begun to test the water. In August 2007, various government offices and universities held the first software testing education forum in Shanghai, explicitly marking “software testing” as a core area in software engineering courses in China. But Dr. Chen Honggang, who has been involved in developing and testing projects like Windows 95, Internet Explorer 4.0/5.0, and SQL Server 2000, said that while universities can alleviate some pressures on software testing, training talent pool is based on overseas experience, vocational training will continue to be the main channel for the supply of software testing talent.