Topic: How to be a good tester?

It’s a every testers question. How to be a good tester? Apart from the technical knowledge, testing skills, tester should have some personal level skills which will help them to build a good rapport in the testing team.

What are these abilities , skills which make a tester as a good tester? Well, I was reading Dave Whalen's artical“Ugly Baby Syndrome!” and found it very interesting. Dave compared software developers with the parents who deliver a baby (software) with countless efforts. Naturally the product managers, architectures, developers spent their countless time on developing application for the customer. Then they show it to us (testers) and asks: “ How is the baby (Application)? “ And testers tell them often that they have and ugly baby. (Application with Bugs!)

Testers don’t want to tell them that they have ugly baby, but unfortunately its our job. So effectively tester can convey the message to the developers without hurting them. How can be this done? Ya that is the skill of a good tester!

Here are the tips sated by Dave to handle such a delicate situation:

Be honest and Responsive:
Tell developers what are your plans to attack their application.

Be open and available:
If any dev ask you to have a look at the application developed by him before the release, then politely give feedback on it and report any extra efforts needed. Don’t log the bug’s for these notes.

Let them review your tests:
If you have designed or wrote some test cases from the requirement specifications then just show them those test cases. Let them know your stuff as you are going to critic on developers work!

Use of Bug tracker:
Some testers have habit to report each and everything publicly. This attitude hurts the developers. So if you have logged any bug then let the bug tracking system report it to respective developers and managers. Also don’t each time rely on bug tracker, talk personally to developers what you logged and why you logged?

Finally some good personal points:

Don’t take it personally:
Do the job of messenger. You could be a close target always. So build a thick skin!

Be prepared:
A good message in the end, Be prepared for everything! If worst things might not happened till now but they can happen at any moment in your career. So be ready to face them.

Edited by Mithi25 - 06Aug2009 at 10:55pm