Habits / Characteristics of Good Software Testers

Software testing is a vast field. I have been in the field of Software QA / Testing for a decade now. Most of my fellow QA Engineers and Developers inquire quite frequently about the core characteristics of a genuine software tester. Believe me, there are so many but I will discuss only those which are not discussed mostly.

Let me tell you a small story. There was an experiment some years back in IBM. They set up a software test team, who they called the ‘black team’. Their sole aim was to break the software. Whatever was given to them to test, they found faults in it. They developed a whole mentality where they were the ‘bad guys’.

They dressed in black, with black hats and long false mustaches all for fun. They really were the bad guys, just like the movies. They were very effective at finding faults in everyone’s work products, and had great fun, but they upset everyone whose project they were involved in. They were most effective, but eventually were disbanded.

The point to be made about all this is that the tester’s mindset is critical.

So, what should be the mentality of a software tester and what are the best practices which they follow to improve this mindset. I will try to throw some light on the habits which I have observed personally in my professional career. Suppose you have the cap of software tester on your head, these should be some habits to groom in yourself to excel professionally:

1-   Makes you feel uncomfortable and sleepless when a BUG is found but not getting reproduced

Let me give you a real time example of this scenario. Suppose you are testing an application which targets the vertical of online eCommerce business and some online transactions are being performed, you observed that there were two debits for single transaction. You tried to reproduce but failed. You tried for number of times to reproduce it by changing the system, the browser, the credentials etc. but failed to reproduce.

Source : GettyImages, Thinking about software bugs in bed

 As a tester, you know it’s a critical bug and if seen in real time, will affect the customer and company both.

And when that thought of ‘how to reproduce the bug’ makes you sleepless, you are a tester in real term.

2-   Testers must have a split personality

Well, you need to have a split personality in you to be at the higher side. Let me elaborate this, you need to be more mature then the developers. A good tester should be able to see the faults from both points of view; as a developer and a tester. You should be able to categorize the defect that if this is a human error, a technical glitch or an introduced regression of already fixed defect. You should be able to put your feet in the shoes of Developer for this.

3-   When you keep sharp eye on what changes made for new release and can think of what could have been affected:

As a tester, it’s very important to know what changes you are expecting for the build; you are going to test and how the changes have been implemented. Even if you do not get clear answer from development team, always emphasize on demanding the information. And once that information is available, understand what has been done with the application and how the changes are going to affect the whole application functionality, overall.

Source : GettyImages

4-   When you believe that learning is the only option to be better:

There is no alternate of Learning. If you do not learn, you are prone to be cast off. So, never get satisfied. You should always learn more and implement it and see the difference. A real tester is the one; who knows that learning test case management is equally important as test case execution. The other thing is documentation, write down each scenario or replication step if an issue is observed by you or anyone else, specially the UI issues / suggestions pointed out in the DEMOs.

5-   When you make inquiries:

Good testers have to make inquiries and loads of them. Testers have a reputation for making inquiries, and it regularly appears to be them endeavoring to demonstrate something, however, there’s really an imperative motivation behind why the best testers make such a large number of inquiries.

Source : GettyImages

This is on account of you need an entire understanding of a bit of software — including who its clients are, the means by which they will utilize the product, what issue the product should understand, how it should take care of that issue, how it should look and feel, and so on — with a specific end goal to legitimately test it.

You folks can share your thoughts in the comments section below. Cheers..!!

References :

https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/11-ways-you-know-youre-a-tester/

https://www.testorigen.com/best-practices-to-advance-software-testing-procedures/