How To Be a Good Tester & Improve As a Best Tester

How did I get into testing? Well, long story short, was dragged into testing out of desperation for a job, does this sound familiar? It’s a tale of most in testing. When I joined as tester wasn’t aware of what is testing was? What was my role as a tester? I was assigned tasks and just did what I was instructed to do so. There was no test planning

What are the roles of tester?

1. To read and analyze all the software documentation and understand to plan testing.
2. Start analyzing test scenarios and write test cases if required on test management tool (This depends on time constraints on a projects)
3. Execute all the test case and report bugs if found on bug management tool.
4. Perform regression testing every time code is deployed to fix bug or weekly bases.

How did I improved as tester?

Hunger for knowledge:

I was as dumb as a newborn in testing, would wonder what testing actually was? So my hunger for gaining knowledge started. I read anything which comes across, It doesn’t have to be based on software testing every experience people shared on post helped me to connect dots in some or other way.

Challenge the future:

I didn’t realize my potential till I had been challenged and pressurized to deliver, the future keeps challenging our role as a tester, It keeps evolving with technological growth, sometimes I find questions like is manual testing dying? Or is automation taking over manual testing? To be automated tester one has to have sound knowledge of manual testing too. Automation is just using tools to get your work done faster. Not that automation is not necessary, but accept automation as challenge so you’ll be ready for the future.

“Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” – Steve Jobs

Curiosity can be key to success:

Trying to know the unknown was my driving force, was always curious to know how technology works in a software and how its competitors could manage to do better than we would drive me nuts and would sit and research on it. That helps me to set my mind for test planning. I would recommend you to follow some open source tools on github, mozwebQA etc.;

Embrace failure:

The only way to improve yourself is by accepting every failure and use them as stepping stones to success. There were times I would miss bugs while testing and when accountability comes I would feel disappointed I used my failures to improve my quality of work. Tried to do better than before it paid off. The regret of not trying because you will be far better than happiness by trying.

Create process and keep improving them:

Here is an example of the bug I reported back in 2009 First bug which wasn’t having any guideline and every team member was following its own way of reporting bugs. Setting up guideline on how to report bugs did change bug report quality and standardized bug reporting process in our company.. I kept on improving process so we improve as a team.

Think out of the box:

Don’t restrict yourself to user stories of the task, create your own user stories and user cases, have a wider perspective of testing. Don’t let someone decide what you should test but plan what you feel should be tested. Always think outside the box and come up with user cases and with that you’ll have more bugs. You’ll be cursed if you find too many bugs, find valid and relate bugs.

Make yourself heard:

The toughest challenge of testing is to convince developers to fix bugs which you have found or making team to accept your suggestion. Always express yourself and make yourself heard no matter whether your bugs gets fixed or suggestions are implemented.

Use tools:

Automation or automatic control, is the use of various control systems, Automation testing is used of any tool to make your routine task faster. Even using a simple plugin to get task completed faster is a kind of automated testing. It is always advisable to use tools if that can make your work faster, because every 1 hrs saved is contributing to revenue and productivity of the company and plus point

Be master of one trade:

One mistake we do as tester tries to be a jack of all trades and end up mastering in none, I did same mistake too, but then changed my approach I got myself expert in one skill set and move on to the next. Don’t try to be into too many things.

Our motto should be “Quality is much better than quantity. One home run is much better than two doubles.” – Steve Jobs. As a tester our duties are not restricted to just testing, but contributing to all debates in engineering team is going to take you a long way and deliver better products to clients and customers.