What is the difference between a Quality Assurance Specialist and a Tester?
Tester, Quality Assurance Specialist, Software Tester, QA Engineer, QA Tester… The position of a person whose main responsibility is to find bugs in software has many names. Their multitude often makes the heads of people outside the IT industry spin. So, today we’re going to look at the first two of the names listed above.
About a tester’s and quality assurance specialist’s job in a few words
The word ‘tester’ is associated with a person who performs some sort of tests, so simply checks something. It can be a test of a device, objects, or even chemicals. In IT, the tester is responsible for checking the software made by developers. They spot and report bugs so that the user can use apps after publication without problems. A tester most often verifies the test cases manually (this depends on the company they work for), which means that they check given functions by themselves manually (without using automation tools).
The most basic form of verifying software are functional tests. Let’s say that an app has a logging in and registration module. A functional test here will be about checking if the whole module works properly. The first thing the tester has to check is the so-called ‘happy path’, i.e. the easiest, most obvious path for the user to take (in this case it will be registration and logging in with the right data). Next, they have to check cases which should not enable the user to go further (e.g. registration/logging in without entering the email address/password, the wrong format of the email address) and verify if the right message is displayed. Then, they need to make sure that the app won’t stop suddenly at any moment while conducting the test.
The tester also verifies the UI (user interface) looking for discrepancies with the graphic design, such as e.g. wrong placement of a button, wrong icon or missing icon, other type of the font or the wrong color of it — all differences should be communicated and explained. A good practice is to report your suggestions about the UI, i.e. what can be changed, what is not readable and may pose a problem for the user.
Another kind of tests are integration tests which are about verifying the information flow between modules and different systems. They are used, among others, when the app connects with different external systems or programs (e.g. a country’s banking system) or when one module downloads data from another within one app, also using information from yet another one.
A tester also runs exploration tests (you can read more about them in this article), which means they try to find an error based only on their own knowledge and experience, without a specification or documentation. Such tests can be complementary to the existing cases which have been taken into consideration and written down earlier. The tester always assumes that there is something which hasn’t been found before. This way, they keep being alert which enables them to find the app’s undesired activity. Moreover, with these types of tests you can update the base of cases for regression.
Before sharing the program in its newest form, they also run regression tests, i.e. checks if the app’s most important modules haven’t broken while making fixes and building specific app functions. These tests, considering their repeatability, are often automated in order to minimize the risk of overlooking an error by the tester due to having to repeat the same test over and over again.
So, what’s the difference between the job of a tester and a quality assurance specialist?
When reading this description a lot of people might think ‘alright, but a QA specialist does the same thing’. It is true, people on this position also run such tests, but it’s not the most important part of their job (at least it’s not according to the definition of the position). To check more, go to the article: What is the difference between a Quality Assurance Specialist and a Tester?
Tagi: software house, mobile development, quality assurance specialist, tester, software, application testing, appchance, job in software house
Originally published at appchance.com on September 26, 2018.
