Certain extreme engagement can be easily applied to any modern job. This is true even for various types of QA engineers. But there are always certain excuses which we tend to use while shouldering our job responsibilities.
Excuses don’t let a person completely take responsibility for the executed work and eventually, such a person is not treated seriously and his/her work is not valued.
Further, we will analyze the most popular “working” excuses that can be applied to testers.
The Testers’ Excuses
Excuse 1: “I have no idea how this functionality should work”
Sometimes testers blindly follow scarce instructions, provided by developers. Consequently, a tester doesn’t even understand what he/she is actually doing and what should be validated.
For example, a project manager sets the task to check that SQL-query works correctly and a final result equals 1. But why? What additional information should be used? How to understand that the actual result is correct? If there is a bug inside the feature that is being tested, how can you confirm a project manager that it has been previously tested by you?
If you, as the person, responsible for the project’s quality, were handed numerous pages of technical text which is absolutely unclear to you, try to bombard a manager or a developer with questions. If a developer can’t clearly explain the principle of the new feature’s functioning, then try to find the one who will be able to do this.
Alternatively, you can try to rephrase the data that is familiar to you, to be sure that you understand everything properly. If you have such a possibility, demand that the information is delivered in a sensible and logical form.
Example: if a tester positions himself/herself as a person who prefers to perceive the information in a visual way, he/she can ask the developers to build together logically clear charts and diagrams that will thoroughly display every step and test.
Excuse 2: “This feature can’t be tested”
Believe it or not: sometimes testers absolutely seriously use such a phrase!
You should never listen to this. Yes, sometimes there are the cases when the functionality can’t be checked since a tester doesn’t simply have access to the admin panel. The solution is simple – just kindly ask a developer to show how the feature works. You can organize the running of several test cases under their (developers’) strict supervision.
Conclusion: if you properly cooperate with a developer, you can efficiently test even complex and logically unclear parts of software, not risking to miss the bugs.
Excuse 3: “A developer created incorrect code”
Sometimes a project manager, a developer and a tester interpret a feature in absolutely different ways.
Such situations won’t take place if a project group will always make group decisions that were discussed previously and if the test criteria are verified by a tester.
If a QA engineer validates a product only on the basis of the developer’s words and checks random parts of code, then it’s his/her professional fault.
A tester is in some way a “final defense” of a product before it will be delivered to end-users.
The task of a tester is to constantly ensure that a client receives what he/she wished to have!
Excuse 4: “The bug has been missed by another tester”
Even the most experienced and skillful testers miss the defects, so you should definitely engage several testers who can look at the same things from different perspectives in a huge and complex project.
You may use one-to-one testing: for example, the first tester checks the software and the second tester runs the software test cases in another environment. As a result, the second QA engineer will definitely find several major defects that have been unintentionally missed by the first tester.
If only one tester works in a company, then you may engage the rest members of a software development process. No doubt, bugs will be found by other people.
Such a statement is a usual case that is scientifically called the “case blindness”.
Excuse 5: “There are was not enough time for complete testing”
Honestly speaking, a QA department will never and no conditions have time to perform complete testing of a product.
Both developers and testers have a professional time range. They may gladly move to developing a new functionality before a responsible tester agrees to validate the feature that is being tested.
Tip: get rid of excuses, test the most important parts of a product, try to properly and wisely spend the time needed for testing.
Excuse 6: “If I find the defect in production, they will ask me why I haven’t done this during the main test”
If your company has managers who scold the testers for finding the bugs in production, run from such managers as quickly as you can.
It’s impossible for a tester to find absolutely all bugs in one or even several cycles of software testing! The software can easily work improperly in numerous different ways!
All that a tester can do is to promptly inform a person responsible for this (a manager or a developer) about the found defect and therefore, know and understand where the bugs may occur.
Tip: if you see even a slightly visible bug in production, then rapidly inform the developers about this since the next time it may be noticed by a client or hundreds of thousands of users!
Excuse 7: “I don’t have the knowledge of development languages, I can’t develop software”
The process of software development at the beginning of 21 century and nowadays (2020), has greatly changed. If in the past, the products were released at best once in half a year and a tester had enough time to perform regression testing, today the speed of development has increased greatly.
A QA engineer has no time to completely test a product, therefore he/she can’t do without test automation. You don’t need to attend any specialized courses, such as Java since modern development languages are based on clear principles of logic that are not hard to study even for a newcomer. The biggest difficulty is that you should know the syntax of every language separately.
If your company doesn’t practice automation, you may simply ask the developers to create several simple tests. Then you may ask skillful testers to help you to visualize the scripts, created by the developers.
Start with something small! You don’t need to immediately study everything. Analyze the process of script development in the same way as studying a new language. When you study a new language, nobody requires maximum knowledge after two days of the start of studying, right? You just learn a few phrases and move on. The same thing can be applied to the process of studying a new programming language.
Short conclusion
Software testing is a very important and honorable activity but sometimes testers are taken for granted by a software quality assurance company. Only in case if a QA engineer implements main principles of extreme engagement and constantly eliminate all possible excuses from your everyday work, he/she may become an important part of the whole development and software testing team.
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