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How Domain knowledge is Important for testers?

“Looking at the current scenario from the industry it is seen that the testers are expected
to have both technical testing skills as well either need to be from the domain background
or have gathered domain knowledge mainly for BFSI is commonly seen.
I would like to know why and when is this domain knowledge imparted to the tester during
the testing cycle?”
First of all I would like to introduce three dimensional testing career mentioned by
Danny R. Faught. There are three categories of skill that need to be judged before hiring
any software tester. What are those three skill categories?
1) Testing skill
2) Domain knowledge
3) Technical expertise.
No doubt that any tester should have the basic testing skills like Manual testing and
Automation testing. Tester having the common sense can even find most of the obvious
bugs in the software. Then would you say that this much testing is sufficient? Would you
release the product on the basis of this much testing done? Certainly not.You will
certainly have a product look by the domain expert before the product goes into
the market.
While testing any application you should think like a end-user. But every human being has
the limitations and one can’t be the expert in all of the three dimensions mentioned above.
(If you are the experts in all of the above skills then please let me know So you can’t assure
that you can think 100% like how the end-user going to use your application. User who is
going to use your application may be having a good understanding of the domain he is
working on. You need to balance all these skill activities so that all product aspects will get
addressed.

Nowadays you can see the professional being hired in different companies are more domain
experts than having technical skills. Current software industry is also seeing a good trend
that many professional developers and domain experts are moving into software testing.

We can observe one more reason why domain experts are most wanted! When you hire
fresh engineers who are just out of college you cannot expect them to compete with the
experienced professionals. Why? Because experienced professional certainly have the
advantage of domain and testing experience and they have better understandings of
different issues and can deliver the application better and faster.

Here are some of the examples where you can see the distinct edge of domain
knowledge: 
1) Mobile application testing.
2) Wireless application testing
3) VoIP applications
4) Protocol testing
5) Banking applications
6) Network testing
How will you test such applications without knowledge of specific domain? Are you
going to test the BFSI applications (Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) just for UI or
functionality or security or load or stress? You should know what are the user requirements
in banking, working procedures, commerce background, exposure to brokerage etc and
should test application accordingly, then only you can say that your testing is enough –
Here comes the need of subject-matter experts.
Let’s take example of my current project: I am currently working on search engine
application. Where I need to know the basic of search engine terminologies and concepts.
Many times I see some other team tester’s asking me questions like what is ‘publishers’ and
‘advertisers’, what is the difference and what they do? Do you think they can test the
application based on current online advertising and SEO? Certainly not. Unless and until
they get well familiar with these terminologies and functionalities.
When I know the functional domain better I can better write and execute more test cases
and can effectively simulate the end user actions which is distinctly a big advantage.

Here is the big list of the required testing knowledge:


 Testing skill
 Bug hunting skill
 Technical skill
 Domain knowledge
 Communication skill
 Automation skill
 Some programming skill
 Quick grasping
 Ability to Work under pressure …
That is going to be a huge list. So you will certainly say, do I need to have these many
skills? Its’ depends on you. You can stick to one skill or can be expert in one skill and have
good understanding of other skills or balanced approach of all the skills. This is the
competitive market and you should definitely take advantage of it. Make sure to be expert
in at least one domain before making any move.
What if you don’t have enough domain knowledge?
You will be posted on any project and company can assign any work to you. Then what if
you don’t have enough domain knowledge of that project? You need to quickly grasp as
many concepts as you can. Try to understand the product as if you are the customer and
what customer will do with application. Visit the customer site if possible know how they
work with the product, Read online resources about the domain you want to test the
application, participate in events addressing on such domain, meet the domain experts. Or
either company will provide all this in-house training before assigning any domain specific
task to testers.
There is no specific stage where you need this domain knowledge. You need to apply your
domain knowledge in each and every software testing life cycle.

What is Banking Domain Knowledge?


Banks primary role - accepting deposits and lending funds from these deposits. 

Banks safeguard money and valuables and provide loans, credit, and payment services, such as
checking accounts, money orders, and cashier’s checks.

In banking, industry-specific services includes:

 Private Banking
 Investment Banking
 Cards & Payment

Types of Banks:

 Retail banks
 Commercial banks
 Investment banks
 Credit Unions

What is Financial Domain Knowledge?

Finance is the science of funds management. The general areas of finance are business finance,
personal finance, and public finance. Finance includes saving money and often includes lending
money. The field of finance deals with the concepts of time, money and risk and how they are
interrelated. It also deals with how money is spent and budgeted. Finance works most basically
through individuals and business organizations depositing money in a bank. The bank then lends the
money out to other individuals or corporations for consumption or investment, and charges interest on
the loans. 

Types of financial services includes:

 Banks (includes Banking and other type of services such as Private Banking, Capital Market
Bank, Bank Cards, Credit card machine services and networks)
 Foreign Exchange Services (includes Currency Exchange, Wire Transfer, Foreign Currency
Banking)
 Investment Services (Asset Management and Hedge Fund Management)
 Insurance (includes Insurance Brokerage, Insurance Underwriting, and Reinsurance)
 Other Financial Services (includes Advisory Services, Private equity, Venture Capital, Angel
Investment, and Conglomerates)

What is Insurance Domain Knowledge?


Insurance provides protection against financial losses resulting from a variety of perils. By
purchasing insurance policies, individuals and businesses can receive reimbursement for losses due to
car accidents, theft of property, and fire and storm damage; medical expenses; and loss of income
due to disability or death. 

Source:  Bureau of Labor Statistics

Types of Insurance:

 Auto Insurance
 Home Insurance
 Health Insurance
 Accident, Sickness and Unemployment Insurance
 Casualty Insurance
 Life Insurance
 Property Insurance
 Liability Insurance
 Credit Insurance
 Other types of insurance which includes
o Collateral protection insurance
o Defense Base Act Workers' compensation
o Expatriate insurance
o Financial loss insurance or Business Interruption Insurance
o Kidnap and ransom insurance
o Locked funds insurance
o Nuclear incident insurance
o Pet insurance
o Pollution Insurance
o Purchase Insurance
o Title insurance
o Travel insurance
o Media Insurance
o Legal Expenses Insurance

 What is Healthcare Domain Knowledge?

 A health care provider is a person or organization that provides services and/or health care
personnel to deliver proper health care in a systematic way to any individual in need of health
care services. A health care provider could be a government, the health care industry, a health
care equipment company, an institution such as a hospital or medical laboratory. Health care
professionals may include physicians, dentists, support staff, nurses, therapists, psychologists,
pharmacists, chiropractors, and optometrists. 

 Life Sciences
 The life sciences comprise all fields of science that involve the scientific study of living
organisms, like plants, animals, and human beings. However, the study of behaviour of
organisms, such as practised in ethology and psychology, is only included inasmuch as it
involves a clearly biological aspect.
 While biology and medicine remain centerpieces of the life sciences, technological advances in
molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of specializations and new,
often interdisciplinary, fields.

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