Software Testing. When I heard about testing a few years back, the first thing which came into my mind is a boring job. What's new in this?, How someone can do innovative with testing?, Who can make carrier in software testing?. I used to think only software developers or business analysts can do innovations, tester can't do innovation in the project. Later I found that software testing is one of the professions which also have innovations.
A tester can help with his/her innovative ideas to a project in many ways. In a given project if tester involvement is from the initial phase then product quality would be far much better. A tester should wear different hats in project addition to his testing like a business analyst.
A tester should think as an actual user thinks. What user faces problem while navigation, UI issues. The tester should think from that perspective how he can make the application more user friendly. He should not behave like a robot that writing test cases and executing them. In a project its the major responsibility of tester that he should think from the user perspective. He should suggest ideas to the client.
A tester should remember 3R’s law before starting testing i.e. 1) Analyze Requirements. 2) Regress Testing. 3) Release to Production. If tester analyzes the requirements properly, effectively, efficiently, innovatively then half battle is won. Tester with the BA role can actually give valuable inputs to the project. They can decide how navigation should be, how UI should be like. Next comes the testing part, in this tester should test regressively with all positive and negative scenarios. More emphasis should be given on test case and test data because these two components are most important. Sometimes an application requires huge data sets. In that case, the tester can do data masking or can generate through databases like SQL. The quality of test cases should be kept in mind. So, that these cases can be reusable detailed, self-explanatory test cases should be made. In the maintenance phase, the project should work with experienced, skilled resources so, that much any issues raised can be addressed quickly in a limited period of time.
A tester should remember a golden rule of ‘Breaking’ whether it is requirements or application. In the initial phase tester with the cap of BA should be given the responsibility to prepare requirement traceability matrix and the tester should prepare RTM at the minute level of requirement. He should break requirements and club them together to make one sprint. Remember if RTM is made and maintained at the high quality then half product is ready. This is because RTM is mapped to test cases, development files. Projects can have an overview by looking into RTM that what requirements are missed or coverage percentage. RTM would also be beneficial when frequent requirements are changing.