An essential guide to being a ‘fairly effective’ software quality tester

I start this by using the word ‘fairly effective’ because what encompasses as a fully effective tester depends on more than what will be stated here. But fairly effective in the sense that you can get some things done. This isn’t an exhaustive list but here are a few of my thoughts.

Know the architecture

This knowledge may not come to you right away but you should try to understand the architecture of the platform you are testing. It goes a long way in understanding how the application works and what areas are likely to fail and where to focus efforts. You should understand the adjacent/third-party platforms that are plugged in, along with any CRM and configuration applications that are part of the end to end test. You become a more effective tester when you can decipher an error to either be a needed configuration, or a third party application not responding properly, or a true undesired application behaviour aka…a bug.

Define your test strategy

Every application is different. And so a test strategy has to be unique or particular to the application in test. There is no one size fits all strategy in testing applications. For instance, a banking application will be more concerned with security, application integration and data integrity, whereas a media application might be more concerned with visuals, transitions and security. Obviously, these are not real scenarios, because there’s a lot more to be looked at than the areas I’ve mentioned in real-world situations. My point is that a strategy is important and yours should depend on the client’s or user’s expectations, not some generic test strategy guide book.

Automate where you can

During regression time, (usually before a release) or every day if you are the rigorous kind, it is tedious to test every journey, every state manually. It is more effective to automate the known tests. This leaves more time to be curious and explore other areas of the system. See my blog on being curious as a tester.

API Testing

This ties into the first point made on understanding the architecture of the system. However, API testing is a huge area of testing and some people place much emphasis on it. Understanding how to send application calls and receive responses via an API application like postman makes your test more precise, especially when your aim is to test the functionality of your application.

Nathan Maduakor is a Software Developer in Test for The Telegraph. Follow him on Twitter.