IT Employment

You don't have to be able to code to be a good QA person. You do have to understand the Software Development life cycle (SDLC) very well.

Understanding the phases of a software development project is very important. You might want to look at the Project Management Book of Knowledge from the Project Management Institute (www.pmi.org)to give you an understanding of the principles. To do a good job of testing, you have to base your testing plan on the requirements.

You also have to take into account what the risk management plan says - that will help identify your testing objectives and priorities. You can't test everything, but you need to test the right things.

You might want to look at some testing courses. I have taken a couple of course from Software Quality Engineering (www.sqe.com) - I recommend the STEP course highly (Software Testing and Evaluation Process).

There are related fields like process assurance you may want to familiarize yourself with as well.

I would rush into certifications - get your feet wet, get some experience and then think about whether it makes sense to go for a certification.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

Regards,

James