More than Testing

The role of a software tester has and will always be evolving. The evolution is a direct reflection of the transformation of trends in people’s lifestyle. At the end of the day, as software testers, we help in providing people with quality products (digital or material). A better understanding of current trends will make it easier to adapt to the needs of the market and the society.

The age of finding defects has long gone. No one is focused on just finding defects and no tester should be ranked on the number of defects unearthed.

Rather people have shifted the focus more on avoiding unpleasant experience for the consumer. Customer retention is a huge factor in the success of a business and hence customer experience factor becomes very critical.

A tester can play a significant role in customer retention by helping create a quality product. Some of the key ingredients for the tester to focus on are,

1.     Personalised Experience: It’s not just enough to have a bug free product, but it’s very important to connect with the user.  A simple example would be how a form field validation is handled. Rather than displaying error messages and highlighting the erroneously filled fields, the user should be guided effectively through the process.

2.     Task Effective: It is imperative for a tester to master the art of user interface design. User’s ability to accomplish their needs with the product in a straightforward manner is very critical. An effective UI design is imperative to achieve this.

3.     Affordability: Knowledge on the relationship between financial and quality metrics is critical for a tester. The cost of production reflects on the selling price of the product and the sales numbers for the company. This might result in either removing some features from the product or making the product more expensive. A tester with knowledge on the key metrics that impacts the cost of production can work to create efficient development/delivery process and minimize wastage.