The China's
Computer Market 2008 Forecast Report has been released recently. It
showed that in the first three quarters of 2007, the software industry in China
has registered sales revenue of $50 billion, up 23.6% on pcp, accounting for
10.95% of the entire electronics and information industry' sales revenue. As
the software market matures, people have higher and higher expectations over
software features, quality and reliability. In October 2005, Ministry of Labour
and Social Security formally listed computer software product tester (software
test engineer) as one of the new professions. In only two years' time, software
testing has become a powerful dark horse in the software industry.
Steadily rising status
"In the early
1990s, software industry was still at an infant stage in China. Most software
projects were very simple, the whole code writing and development process could
be handled by one person. As industry competition intensified, software
companies were gradually evolving from one-man-band small shops to software
engineering co-operations. Although division of labour could improve software
development efficiency and functional varieties, it also lead to increasing
number of bugs between modules and deteriorating qualities," said Mr Wang
Yazhi from CONCEPT Information Technology Ltd, a major software development
company in Beijing. Quality impairment would not only damage a software firm's
competitiveness, it could also lead to massive economic loss for software users
or even personal injuries, such as medical accidents.
As China's software
enterprises continue to prosper, the importance of software testing has also
been increasingly appreciated by software companies. Many large and medium
software companies have begun recruiting professional staff to take care of
software testing. Ms Ran Chunjuan, a former testing manager in Wuhan Superidea
Technology Ltd, said that "in Superidea, the ratio between software
testers and developers is 1:4. Although this is still well behind the
international best practice of 1:1, it is still a great improvement from 1:8 a
few years ago."
Industry experience
appreciated
In addition to lifting
the number of software testing staff, many companies are demanding higher staff
quality as well, especially in areas of professional testing experience and
thinking ability. "A tester without professional training can still work
out 3-5 testing methods, but not necessarily detect bugs. Even if bugs are
discovered, he might not be able to express the problems in proper languages,
which could increase developers' workload. Those well-trained testers can work
out 10-20 testing methods, such as boundary value analysis, equivalence classes
and cause-effect diagrams, to maximally discover any bugs. Professional testers
can also articulate testing documents in standardised languages, thus improving
the recovery rates of software problems," said Mr Liu Fei, a former
testing manager in Qualcomm. Many companies in China have now established
independent testing departments, working along with R&D departments.
As companies' software
testing knowledge deepens, work scope for testing staff is expanding from
system testing phase to unit testing and integration testing phases. "This
requires software testers to have in-depth knowledge about the businesses a
product is involved in," said a testing manager from Founder Group, one of
China's largest software companies, "for example, when we test software
for banking applications, we have to first understand the specific users in the
bank. 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 will not buy, it no
matter how well the software works." Therefore it could be forecast that
the status for software testers who possess technical experience and customer
demand knowledge will further enhance.
A sellers' market
"The software
testing industry is at a growth stage," said Prof Zheng Renjie, a software
testing expert. The current hot market for software testers is mainly due to
the rapid development in software industry itself, "companies are
demanding better quality software, which has in turn stimulated demand for
software testers. But talent supply and talent training are lagging behind the
dramatic changes in market demand, hence a telent shortage."
At present, software
testing talent shortfall in China has exceeded 200,000, and it is rising to the
300,000 threshold. According to statistics, total software tester supply from
nationwide IT training institutions is less than 10,000 per year, thus it can
be foreseen that the testing talent shortage could last another 5-10 years. At
the same time, talent shortage has given leverage to tester remunerations.
According to a remuneration report from 51Job.com in China, starting salary for
software testing engineers ranges from $400 - 650 per month, and it could
increase to $1200 - 1650 for engineers with 2 to 3 years' experience, higher
than the remuneration for many developers with similar service years. As the
talent supply shortage continues into 2008, software testers' remuneration is looking
for more gains.
Education and training
The shortage in software
testers in China has not only lifted the remuneration levels, not also created
a boom for educational and training institutions. Even two years ago, several
prominent IT professional training institutions had realised the importance of
software testing positions, and organized a few domestic and international
software testing experts to co-develop training courses, which have
successfully cultivated lots of software testing talents in the past two years.
Currently in China, apart from overseas recruitment and company internal
training, external professional training is also an important channel for
producing software testers, amounted to 12% of total talent supply. As
companies are paying more attention to labour costs control, more professional
talents are expected to come from external training institutions.
While professional IT
training is booming, tertiary education institutions also began to test the
water. In August 2007, the first software testing education forum was held in
Shanghai by various government bureaus and universities, explicitly marking
"software testing" a core area in software engineering courses in
China. But Dr Chen Honggang, who had been involved in development and testing
of projects such as Windows95, Internet Explorer 4.0/5.0 and SQL Server 2000,
commented that although universities can ease some pressures on software
testing talent educations, based on overseas experience, professional training
will still be the main channel for supplying software testing talents.
For more information on
Chinese businesses, please visit www.chinabizintel.com
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