What Strategies to Perfect for a Systematic Software Testing Process?

Posted by ImpactQA on January 10th, 2018

Along with a rapid change in the industry’s technology and a turn towards a nimble methodology, the role of the software tester is evolving at a much faster pace. Unlike older days, being a tester is no longer a job to find bugs and errors, its way more than that. Now, it is all about a constant software improvement, creating proper and specialized software testing solutions, and covering that extra mile to enhance quality and performance.

Having a determined, systematic approach towards software testing might help testers gain extra knowledge about the product they are working on, put up questions they otherwise may not have asked before, and become a professional quality tester. This transition has opened the gates to exciting, undiscovered, and challenging but golden opportunities for software testers present at any corner of the world. Let’s look at what strategies testers need to perfect for a stable and improves testing process.

●    Read and Acquire Knowledge Before Testing
Whenever you are about to perform a task, it’s always a good idea to gain some knowledge about it before initiating the process. Similarly, it is highly advised to grab as much information about the product/software being tested as possible. Try to get the design sheets and architectural documents and give them a thorough read. Undoubtedly, you will be astonished by how much more you will start understanding about the software’s integrated components, architecture, and the data’s flow which you would not from just testing.

●    Consider Past Defects
Most of the professional software testers follow, “Past Informs the Present”. Basically, it means as a tester, you should consider past defects as well. Knowing the risky and vulnerable areas that could hamper the application’s functionality with any change. This sort of data you can acquire from the history of errors.
Conduct constant researches on defects you found and examine past errors reported. Any foreseeable defect pattern comes into the light would help you in developing more stable software for those areas. Also, consider and analyze defects listed by the customers.

●    Prioritize the Defects
Software testing helps in finding issues and your report and solve them. But your work isn’t done yet - you can walk that extra mile and ask some relevant questions. Is there anything possible that you would have done to know the root cause? Do you know how that issue emerged, what triggered it in the first place, and which kind of issue was it?

To become a strategical software tester, you need to understand that all this isn’t just the job of only developers. You can dig a little deeper to solve the errors as you have the access to the code, the log file and even, the commits. It is always appreciable to narrow down the problems and have a proper discussion with the concerned developer.

Summary
All these questions insist the tester go beyond its level for what they were “allocated” to test. One main key is to focus on learning to be proactive instead of being reactive. It helps in initiating discussions with developers and product owners, who might have thought so far about a few of these scenarios. The bugs you discover may lead to serious errors or technical glitches when covered, but by having answers, you may prevent big problems in software’s functioning, resulting in creating a systematic and stable software testing process. So, quit just being a local tester and take one step ahead to becoming a professional, full-fledged software tester.