How to become the best tester?

Did this question bang you every time during the job interview? For sure you have experienced as a tester that the definition of ‘best’ is an ever-changing criterion with time. You can not be a ‘jack of all trades’ when it comes to your exposure of testing tools. But yes, to become a successful tester you must prepend some basic criteria to be evolved as the best tester over the time.

Areas you must concentrate upon to become the best tester

Passion in the testing domain

It is an obvious fact that when people make their passion as a profession, they become highly productive in that profession and successful as well. So, first ask yourself whether you have that level of patience and willingness to go deep into the process and not just doing executing test cases. Testing gives to a lot of challenges in terms of knowledge, skill, patience, and tolerance on extreme scenarios. So you must be motivated from inside to prove yourself as the best.

Understand priorities

When you are assigned to test a module, you are given with numerous test cases. So, beforehand you must be ready with the required knowledge and functionality about the application. Because you have to work on tight schedule and if you cannot prioritize the test cases as per their functional importance, you cannot give output within the timeline. If you are given an automation environment keep in mind that not all the scenarios can be tested by automation. So, prioritize which will be manual and which can be automated. This is not something can be achieved instantly, the only experience will adopt you with analyzing priorities.

360-degree testing approach

Remember that as a tester your job is to hit the core areas to prevent future malfunction of an application which can severely affect stake holder’s revenue. So, while into testing, consider from the viewpoint of all stakeholders. Wear the shoes of end users, understand the business from root level, the application and all possible scenarios that an application can encounter technically and functionally and from a business perspective.

Excellent verbal and written communication skill

As a tester, you are basically trying to find the defects through experimenting an application from all angles. And any experiment needs to go through many steps and understanding. So as a tester you must be able to communicate appropriately with the development team, business team and with stakeholders to get the clear picture of the application and its purpose. Hence, excellent articulation skill is very necessary. Along with it, you must have superior report generation ability that needs strong writing skill. Because sometime you may need to report negative things in a positive way.

Be an idea generator

If you want to stand out of the crowd, generate as much as ideas as possible. Anyone can write ordinary test cases but if you can think out of the box, you will get best possible ideas. Again think from 360-degree views and gain knowledge on the testing areas to generate the most effective test cases.

Understand the data

When it is testing the functionality of an application, it all deals with data in different scenarios. You must have a clear perception of the data collected from your testing to analyze the behavior of an application in particular scenario. You must be a good player with real-time data.

Be a real-time analyzer

Always think from real-time perspectives. For example, for an academic website when you are testing a UI from a student’s perspective you need to focus on testing the relevant information that could be useful for them. On the other hand, when you are testing a website for a graphic agency, stress must be given to its look and feel.

Be diplomatic in communication

Positive attitude brings out a positive result. Hence, as a tester represent the defects to the developers and stakeholders in a positive way, suggesting improvement areas and impacted areas. Don’t ever finger point someone, remember you are supposed to help the improvement and not playing any blame game.

Get noticed by effective reporting

As a tester, you may have worked long hours, executed numerous test cases, spent brainstorming hours to determine the defect areas and finally updated the defect tracker. That’s all! How does this prove your hard work in front of the world? So, don’t just only restrict yourself in the assigned job, rather learn to represent yourself if you want a growth. Get yourself noticed by management and clients with a short status update on your work and suggestion on the defects.

Always be flexible

As mentioned earlier, as a tester you must be ready for working extra hour even in odd hours. You have to be ready to stretch your bandwidth even with a development team. Because a developer may not test in the same way you did to find the bug. You have to be a smart worker along with hard worker because time management is crucial in this field.

Pace up with current industry trends

Never stop learning. As technology is enhancing every day, watch out industry trends and evaluate software testing market. If you want to survive in the competition adapt with new tools and methodologies. For example, IT industry is moving towards open source automation testing tools like Selenium, Agile structure, DevOps, Big data testing and much more. Moreover, as per current statistics by 2019, integration market in this domain will grow at a rate of 14.6%.So, try to learn new things to make your tomorrow better than today.

Follow the testing blogs

Follow the testing blogs to build up a strong professional network to stay updated. It will also help to learn new things from different problem statements posted in those blogs.

Finally, keep patience, be focused, follow all points mentioned above and most importantly enjoy testing. For some people software testing is an addiction and when you are totally devoted to something you will surely get the best outcome of it.

TestUnity

Testunity is a SaaS-based technology platform driven by a vast community of testers & QAs spread around the world, powered by technology & testing experts to create the dedicated testing hub. Which is capable of providing almost all kind of testing services for almost all the platforms exists in software word.