Chartered Accountants and Software Industry

“Software Testing is skill of mind”. It is an art which one can learn and practise. It depends on individual’s instinct to learn new things and adapt to changing environment. Anyone who wants to learn software testing can learn. You need to have passion for it if not still you need to have an urge to learn.

Information technology is dynamic in nature, application which has been launched today may demand up-gradation tomorrow or may become obsolete day-after, you just can’t predict. Any profession which stops learning new things it stagnates. Growth stops. One day you get dead end in your career if you stop learning. Software testing is ongoing process. Every project, every question, new context would teaches you new lesson. It is most happening field.

One who wish to do career can learn skills like exploration, asking questions, investigating problems, identifying bugs or writing a bug report but first understand what is your interest. If you do not come to any conclusion that’s OK because very few can find their interest so easily. One thing in mind that whatever decision you make, thing that matters most is how to make it right and that’s in your hand, choose the career in which you have passion. If you had seen movie ‘3 idiots’, you won’t forget one dialogue.

"Run behind your passion, success will run behind you."

Quality of human to stay student forever would help him to grow in the field you selected as a career option. So ask yourself ‘How good are you as a student?’ you must be willing to learn. It’s not on the teacher who teaches, having high regards in that field but what is a point if student does not want to try those lessons?  That’s where you may find it tough when it comes to demonstration or performing what you learned. You can make your career life easy by learning and practically implementing what you learned.

I am Chartered Accountant by profession. I have come across a numerous people asking me what you are doing in the Software field? I think Chartered Accountancy do not restrict its scope in Accounts and Tax otherwise the subjects like Computers, ERP would not have been part of the CA syllabus. Being a Chartered Accountant, challenging status quo, setting up expectations, demanding the deliverable, keen eye on the quality and issues are keys to success when I am operating out in Software field.

This is my version of entering the field of Software applications. Currently, in the software industry the opportunities are twofold. One, in this industry there is and will be a demand for accounts and finance people. The second and the more recent area is that of consultants, who interface with the technical team and the clients. These consultants facilitate effective communication between the technical team and the client. Finance professionals with their grounding in information technology will be ideally suited for this industry. They liaison with the clients, fully comprehend their business requirements, review the contract, analyse and evaluate the project. The job content is very different and there is a lot of variety available in this kind of a job. For the first time a financial executive is interacting directly with the clients. It gives him the opportunity to be seen in commercial roles due to their orientation of work with different clients.A chartered accountant with his knowledge in accounting , taxation and ability to analyse can understand the implication of systems on entity.Impact of rapid industrialisation, computerisation, and globalisation has had tremendous effect on scope and opportunities for CA's.

CA’s role spans throughout the life cycle of implementation which includes stages like current business process study, solution design, solution build, data migration, user training and post-production support.

Initiation and Internal Planning: Defining the scope of the project. Deliverable for this phase include a general outline of the implementation schedule and basic project milestones.

Business Process Analysis: Studying the existing process and identifying key business areas. It includes understanding and documentation of process workflows and identifying the areas for automation.

Solution Design: Details how the product and processes will be aligned to achieve the desired objectives. It involves iterative process re-engineering and finalising the future business processes.

Solution Build: The goal is to build, test, assess, and refine the initial prototype. The deliverable for this phase is a prototype demonstration for the executive sponsor, steering committee and key users.

Acceptance Testing: The Company’s core team receives a greater degree of training in the software’s architecture and technology, capabilities, maintenance, and usage.

Transition: Once the prototype has been refined and accepted, it’s expanded and built to full production scale.

Documentation: This also plays an important role for smooth transition of the new system and maintaining the same in future. Most of the companies follow standard policies of documentation generally outlined by the ERP vendors. A good and detailed documentation helps in a great way in successful implementation and streamlining the processes.

Skill required to join the software industry:

• Basics of Computers
• Because of the consulting profile, it requires much more than good academic knowledge and domain experience.
• Soft skills : Good communication, presentation skills, Persuasive skills.
• Analytical skills : High degree of analytical, problem-solving skills, creative thinking, questioning the status quo.
• Team skills : Relationships skills, cooperation, networking, handling disagreement.
• Project management skills :Organising and prioritising work.
• Customer orientation : Commitment for customer satisfaction.
• Fast learners : Require quick grasping of product functionalities, processes of different industries and continuous updating with new technologies.

Do not worry what world says negative about software testing. You take good things and throw rest because that does not help to grow anyway.

• You will grow intellectually: Business Analyst and Software testing has huge scope to learn intellectually because your mind gets involved in many test ideas, bugs and bug reports.
• You will learn how to be creative: You need to come up with Ideas which would help you to find bugs because bugs are not so easy to find.
• You will learn to form your own judgement:  People including me would accept someone’s statement as it is without even bothering about the truth behind that statement. I stopped it because testing taught me that it’s quite harmful.
• You will be wise in your thoughts:   When you learn how to find bugs and how you need to convince stakeholders that this would impact customer or their business then you would start getting real business sense and customers.
• You will improve your skills: Testing would help you to improve your skills viz. communication, observation, judgement, analytical, problem solving and questioning skills and that becomes your asset for your career.
• You will form good habits: When you would start taking interest in this field you will learn that you need to read books, articles and blogs. You make a habit of reading which is good because that would help to learn testing better way. You try to be with like minded people because you also want to share your thoughts and listen to theirs. You want to be a part of testing contests because you are also confident to solve them.
• You will be a creator: Every new project you would find an opportunity to create new methodology. Isn’t it great?
• You will start accepting challenges: When you would start learning new domain, technologies and test techniques then this kind of attitude would help you to survive in this ever changing digital generation.