Testing as a career option

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Q. I am an AS/400 cum BPCS developer with 2.5 years of experience. I have done development work for 1.5 years and have spent 10 months doing testing (manual) project work.

Now I am given a chance to shift from development to testing. Will doing so be a good move?

Career advice from K Srini, human resources head-strategy of global consulting and IT services provider, Satyam Computer Services:
Testing as a career option is increasingly finding favor with in the IT market place. Corporations are now looking for testing as an independent service offering.

People with experience in development have a natural edge when it comes to testing. In fact, once you graduate from manual to automated testing, the benefits of a development background come forth--especially since a lot of testing tools demand a certain amount of coding as well.

The career path would be something like a testing engineer to testing specialist to testing practise manager.

Also, it is essential to get certified by some global accreditations like the CSTE, ISTQB, etc.

Going forward, testing in specific industry domains like telecom, aerospace and banking will gain importance than just expertise in a particular methodology or a testing tool.