People pray every day for good health and long life, and a software tester prays every day - O Lord, the software which I’ve tested for my developers, enables them for the bug-free deployment of the final build.
If you’re a tester, our blog post can help you relate your story with day to day activities of software tester in a QA company. If you’re done with your post-graduation and excited to start your professional life as a software tester, you need to know everything about software testing, the day-to-day activities of QA testers, roles & responsibilities in a software testing team, and different types of software testing solutions.
Introduction to Software Testing
Software testing is the field chosen by professionals to help organizations, especially designers & developers, find the defects which they made while developing & designing any business software or mobile & web applications. The purpose of testing the software is to optimize the performance, deliver the quality, and address all the risks before releasing the final product to the end-users.
Software Testers Daily Routine - How Work Day Begins in Testing Teams
Attend Scrum Meetings
Most of the professional software testing companies give importance to daily scrum meetings because it helps testers understand the single details of a project. The team leader assigns tasks to everyone in the testing team, and allows them to ask any questions, clear their doubts before initiating the test. This usually helps testing teams to work structurally in a organized way.
A software tester also collaborates with the development teams to know their project requirements better. In daily routine of software tester, proper communication helps them generate quality into the product during every testing phase. It even gives them huge confidence to meet the delivery needs faster.
Mastering the Requirements
You know, a software tester is the only person who can saves an entire company from the biggest disaster. This is one of the main reason why, many people prefer to hire software testers because they give confidence in the software and make it perfect to use and present in front of audience.
Just imagine, if the developer builds an application with shoddy code and ignores the testing process, what will happen? It's simple. Your app is either hacked by hackers or isn't used by your customers. The reason can be poor quality design and low security.
Therefore, mastering the testing requirement is a key element of software tester daily activities and responsibilities. Whether it is a healthcare business, telecommunication, e-commerce sector, banking field, or finance domain, the role of a software tester is to review all-sized industries' requirements and use mind mapping techniques and exploratory testing to implement the system successfully.
Setting Up a Deadline for Project Management
Due to the convenience of agile methodologies, from mobile app to web app testing, it becomes easier for service providers to set one deadline for the project and the same it gives to their clients. Previously, the testing was done with the waterfall model, and it was so difficult to measure the progress of the project within stages. In such situation, making a change in the software feels impossible during testing complicating the daily activities of software tester.
However, the agile approach gives a sigh of relief to testers because it allows them to write the test plan and update for every release simultaneously. Agile testing is the new normal for almost all QA services. With advanced methodologies, it becomes easier for QA tester in agile to find the defects from the app at the earlier stages, while reducing the cost for business owners. The agile evolutionary methods allow the testing teams to anticipate incoming project changes and make quick corrections based on stakeholder feedback.
Writing Test Cases
Test cases are the documents that are usually prepared by the tester to ensure that the actions which they’ve set for the application are thoroughly verified and fulfill the expected functionality of the feature.
The reason for writing effective test case for the mobile application or website or software is to achieve good test coverage, improve the quality of software, reduce the software support and maintenance costs, and assure that the app/software will meet all the unique requirements of end-users. Test cases are reusable that can be used by anyone in the testing team to execute the test in many ways.
Test Case Execution
A main phase where the tester plays a major role. Test execution is not just about running the tests through tools. It’s not as easy as you think because there is too much work handled alone by software testers like updating scripts, preparing defects reports, giving clarification to developers, and maintaining a status report.
During and after the implementation of tests, the QA team does self-questioning. For example:
1. “How can I increase the website’s performance?”
2. “What type of risk is involved & how can I help to address it?”
3. “What if I skip the stringent security standards for desktop applications?”
These are some What if the questions that software testers ask themselves while executing the tests, and it helps them increase their learning as well as productivity at the workplace.
Test Closure
Maintaining a test closure is the essential phase for the QA team because it gives deep insights that all the bugs are removed, and the test is conducted well during the software development life cycle.
It is like a memo in which everything is written, like how many test cases are executed, how many bugs are fixed, and what more improvements we can make for our customers.
Roles & Responsibilities Flow In A Software Testing Team
A testing company has a myriad of team members from QA leaders, test leads, manual test engineers, network test engineers, usability testing engineers, automation testing specialists to test library and configuration professionals who work on different tasks but all have one common aim that is to assure that the testing is carried out as per the defined procedures and standards. There will be no bug left before the final release. They include:
QA Leader - Job Description
- Represent the team members of the software testing and build a strong relationship with customers.
- Deciding the test schedule and budget.
- Finding the testing activities for test engineers or testers.
- Planning the complete testing process and helping the team to understand.
- Maintaining the status report for all testing activities.
- Giving testing updates to the project managers.
- Conducting pre & post meetings.
- Checking the resource availability for implementing the various testing operations.
Test Lead - Job Description
- Provide support for staff planning, customer interface, supervision, and progress status reporting.
- Executing the test process.
- Verify the quality of testing requirements such as test design, testability, test script, test automation, etc.
- Checking the latest testing trends and tools.
- Ensuring the completion of the test product documentation.
- Organizing walk-through for test procedures and test designs.
Usability Testing Engineer - Job Description
- Designing different scenarios for usability testing.
- Building documentation for test products.
- Overseeing the usability testing process.
- Engaging in the testing process walk-through.
Automation Testing Engineer - Job Description
- The primary task that contributes to the daily activities of software tester, it begins with designing and developing the test process based on different client’s requirements.
- Using the right automation testing tools to deliver the projects faster and make regression testing easier.
- Getting feedback from end-users and making changes if it is necessary also falls under the daily activities of an automation test engineer.
- Implementing the tests and preparing the reports is another important part of automation tester day to day activities.
Software Tester– An Unsung Hero?
A software tester don’t quit until the developer says that the client is thrilled with the results. Moreover, they utilize their skills and give 100% to overcome different testing challenges. So, If you are ready to go into the field of software testing, you need to understand how the day a software tester leads toward his/her goal . Also, you have to act as the unsung hero of the software development life cycle - one who does too much hardship for making the software better but gets little or no recognition.
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