Testers play a vital role in successfully completing projects in an IT company. They are the persons who are responsible for giving quality outcomes and releasing the projects with success. Testers are given the responsibility to release projects without defects and provide peace of mind to the end users. The role of a QA tester is challenging and he needs to ensure that the project completes successfully.
Today, we are going to discuss about the several traits that a QA tester should have in order to perform his duties efficiently. Testing should be done in a planned manner otherwise the aim of providing bug free software application to the user will not be achieved.
Let’s talk about the essential characteristics of a QA tester:
1) Quality over Quantity:
A QA tester should play emphasis on quality over quantity. This means always go for quality of bugs in any software applications rather than gathering bulk of non-effective or less prioritized bugs. Finding most important and effective bugs by QA tester will help developers, designers and managers to increase quality of work and productivity. One good quality of bug is 10 times more effective than finding a list of 10 bugs with lesser priority and lesser severity of bugs.
2) Priority Matters:
While performing testing over applications a QA tester should be able to prioritize bugs according to their priority consideration. ‘Priority’ means how urgent it is to fix a bug in an application. It is the duty of a QA tester to understand and assign priority to a bug so that it makes easier for the developer and designer to have knowledge which bugs need to be taken into consideration while fixing a bug.
3) Communication Skills:
When it comes to communication skills, a QA tester should have fluent communication skills so that he can effectively communicate with test cases, bug reports etc.
A QA tester needs to communicate with the development, designing, business analyst team and thus, he should have strong inter-personal skills. He should be able to correctly communicate the needs of the project so that timely decisions can be made.
With poor communication skills, it is difficult for a QA tester to survive in today’s competitive world.
4) Be Professional:
Whenever a new assignment is given, a QA tester should always try to perform testing in a new and refreshed manner. This implies that a QA tester should test a new application with the new aspects in consideration. Rather than depending on previous project results, a fresh approach towards finding bugs in a new project should be laid emphasis on.
5) Awareness of Mistakes:
A QA tester should learn from his/her mistakes and from others too. Never feel shy to accept your mistakes and try to work on them whether it’s the case of bug reports or test cases. A person should always ready to learn from mistakes to attain success in life.
6) Effectiveness of Bug Reports:
This can only be attained by repairing good bug report for bug reporting to the development and designing team. Need to be more effective while preparing bug reports, try to provide bugs view through screenshots and small video options if possible which will help a lot for development team to understand the main cause of problem due to visual appearance.
7) Be Active and Passionate:
Activeness can only be gained by questioning for the doubts like: What to test? Why to test? How does it work? Where does it work? What if it doesn’t work? This type of attitude needs to have in a QA tester.
A QA tester should be always passionate of what he/she does. Never feel bored of testing and preparing bug reports, test cases and any kind of documentation. Always be ready to learn new aspects and try to engage yourself in testing trainings and group discussions with other QA testers.
Conclusion
Work and try to implement these above 7 steps in your testing activities. You should continuously strive to become better and better. Testing is a challenging yet creative job where you can grow enormously. So, just love your job and continue to work heartedly towards becoming a leader in the field of QA testing. All the best!
Have something to add to this story? Let us know in the comments.
