Living life as a Software Tester!

What do we mean by a great software testing team?
Recently I read a very interesting article on “All I Ever need to know about testing” by Lee Copeland.
I was so impressed with the concept of our day to day work comparison with the software testing.
I will extract only points related to software testing. As a software tester keep in mind these simple points:
Share everything:
If you are a experienced tester on any project then help the new developers on your project. Some testers have habit to keep the known bugs hidden till they get implement in code and then they write a big defect report on that. Don’t try to only pump your bug count, share everything with developers.
Build trust:
Let the developers know any bug you found in design phase. Do not log the bug repeatedly with small variations just to pump the bug count. Build trust in developer and tester relation.
Don’t blame others:
As a tester you should not always blame developers for the bugs. Concentrate on bug, not always on pointing that bug in front of all people. Hit the bug and its cause not the developer!
Clean up your own mess:
When you finish doing any test scenario then reconfigure that machine to its original configuration. The same case applies for bug report. Write a clean effective bug report. Let the developer find it easy to repro and fix it.
Give credit to others for their work:
Do not take others credit. If you have referred any others work, immediately give credit to that person. Do not get frustrated if you not found any bug that later has been reported by client. Do work hard, use your skill.
Remember to flush
Like the toilets flush all the software’s at some point. While doing performance testing remember to flush the system cache.
Take a nap everyday:
We need time to think, get refresh or to regenerate our energy.
Some times its important to take one step back in order to get fresh insight and to find different working approach.

Need of Skilled Testers
Some years ago many companies preferred not to have separate test engineers in the project team. But this I have not seen in past 2-3 years in my career. As now all the companies have a clear idea of the need of the QA and test engineers. Also the QA and testers rolls are now concrete and there is no confusion.
Unfortunately, still I find the perception of testing as a inferior role in some developers mind. This “anyone can do” attitude should be removed from those people’s mind. Lots of companies hiring “any” skilled personals to do this job and eventually suffering from the lost of money and time. Instead of hiring the junk of testers they should hire some gifted testers who can do there job beyond the developer’s limitations.
If Managers and management remove this inferiority thinking from their mind then they can hire these gifted testers in their organization. Such testers can do complex job well, can find complex bugs and further more can add some procedures to the way of doing the routine jobs in order to make it more structured.
This is what I expect in coming years; let me know your opinions.

Sample bug report
Below sample bug/defect report will give you exact idea of how to report a bug in bug tracking tool.
Here is the example scenario that caused a bug:
Lets assume in your application under test you want to create a new user with user information, for that you need to logon into the application and navigate to USERS menu > New User, then enter all the details in the ‘User form’ like, First Name, Last Name, Age, Address, Phone etc. Once you enter all these information, you need to click on ‘SAVE’ button in order to save the user. Now you can see a success message saying, “New User has been created successfully”.
But when you entered into your application by logging in and navigated to USERS menu > New user, entered all the required information to create new user and clicked on SAVE button. BANG! The application crashed and you got one error page on screen. (Capture this error message window and save as a Microsoft paint file)
Now this is the bug scenario and you would like to report this as a BUG in your bug-tracking tool.
How will you report this bug effectively?
Here is the sample bug report for above mentioned example:
(Note that some ‘bug report’ fields might differ depending on your bug tracking system)
SAMPLE BUG REPORT:
Bug Name: Application crash on clicking the SAVE button while creating a new user.
Bug ID: (It will be automatically created by the BUG Tracking tool once you save this bug)
Area Path: USERS menu > New Users
Build Number: Version Number 5.0.1
Severity: HIGH (High/Medium/Low) or 1
Priority: HIGH (High/Medium/Low) or 1
Assigned to: Developer-X
Reported By: Your Name
Reported On: Date
Reason: Defect
Status: New/Open/Active (Depends on the Tool you are using)
Environment: Windows 2003/SQL Server 2005
Description:
Application crash on clicking the SAVE button while creating a new
user, hence unable to create a new user in the application.
Steps To Reproduce:
1) Logon into the application
2) Navigate to the Users Menu > New User
3) Filled all the user information fields
4) Clicked on ‘Save’ button
5) Seen an error page “ORA1090 Exception: Insert values Error…”
6) See the attached logs for more information (Attach more logs related to bug..IF any)
7) And also see the attached screenshot of the error page.
Expected result: On clicking SAVE button, should be prompted to a success message “New User has been created successfully”.
(Attach ‘application crash’ screen shot.. IF any)
Save the defect/bug in the BUG TRACKING TOOL.  You will get a bug id, which you can use for further bug reference.
Default ‘New bug’ mail will go to respective developer and the default module owner (Team leader or manager) for further action.

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