Skills of an Agile Tester

This post is referred from ISTQB Agile certification syllabus plus I have included my own experience working in Agile environment as a Tester.
Let's discuss about the skills first. I have categorized skills in two categories:

•  Technical Skills
•  Interpersonal Skills

Technical skills include:

• Test automation: It is crucial to have at least a basic understanding of automation and the tools which are used for automating. Automation not only saves a lot of time and efforts but also, gives you quick defects on the newest build. 
• TDD (Test Driven Development): This is used to develop code which is mainly guided by the automation. In other words, we call it "test-first" approach, so the test is written first and then code follows. 
• ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development): As the same suggests, this defines the acceptance criteria and helps developers, testers and business people to understand what they need to get the expected results. This approach includes reusable test cases for regression. 
• White box testing: As we know, white box tester basically tests the lines of code. To know the logic always helps in getting the better quality and deep testing. 
• Black box testing: To test the functional and non-functional aspect of the software, black box testing was invented. Tester doesn't have to go in detail of the working logic of the code. But he knows what to expect from the software.
• Exploratory or experience based testing: The beauty of exploratory testing lies in tight deadlines. Since Agile is time-boxed approach, experience based testing helps in getting the most important defects without following a lot of documentation. 

Now, let's discuss some interpersonal skills of an Agile tester:

• Positive and solution oriented: In Agile, time is limited so instead of arguing on what could be done, agile tester is expected to know what can be done and how to resolve any barrier. 
• Skeptical thinking and quality oriented: Having skeptical mindset helps in getting the out of the box scenarios to improve the quality. 
• Actively participate in getting the requires information from the stakeholders, rather than depending on the documents and specifications. 
• Accurate evaluation of test results, progress and reporting: While analyzing the test reports, Agile tester can help developers in understanding the defect properly which would help in fixing it faster. 
• Properly defines the testable user stories and help customer and developers in understanding the acceptance criteria: Sometimes user stories can be confusing since they don't have a lot of details in them. It is the responsibility of the tester to make every user story testable and help his team to understand the acceptance criteria.
• Collaborate within the team and work in pairs (with developers or business people): Communication is the key to success in Agile. Work in pairs always help in understanding the product better.
• Should be faster in accommodating requirement changes in existing test cases and adding new ones: Requirements are ever changing, it is better to have a framework where changing requirements can be accommodated easily and new test cases can be added without much hassle. 
• Plan and organize  in an effective way: Planning ahead of time can help in achieving the goals on time.

These were some of the major skills needed to become a successful Agile tester. I hope you found this post helpful.