3 QA Testing Tips

Long gone are the days when a manual tester could sit down with the new build of a software application and find defect after defect.

QA Environment Best Practices

Adapting to Change

Even though most testers love, love, love finding bugs, the art of testing is changing.

In the past, QA testers used to receive buggy software builds that had undergone little to no developer testing.

In today’s software development environment, that inefficient and outdated practice no longer exists. Developers are doing much more unit testing and code reviews these days. And automated testing suites are getting larger and covering more functionality.

By the time the software reaches QA’s hands, there are far fewer defects in the product that are quick and easy to find. So what’s a tester to do?

3 QA Testing Tips

Here are three QA testing tips you can use to find defects faster.

1. Look For Edge Case Issues

Developers and automated tests often miss the edge cases. So, it's up to you to find them to you.

Ask yourself:

• What issues have customers reported recently that were not found during the testing phase?
• What other areas of the application might be impacted by newly implemented features?
• How can I use the special knowledge I have about the application to uncover hard to find issues?

2. Search ‘Deep’ As Well As ‘Broad’

Sometimes, a QA tester have to dig deep into the application’s functional areas to find defects. And that means increasing your test coverage. 

Ask yourself:

• What areas of the product may have been impacted by new or changed functionality?
• How can I expand a test to include functionality that might provide more in-depth test coverage?
• What end-to-end tests can I perform that simulate how real world customers are likely to use the product?

3. Test With Greater Variety

Testing needs to involve more than just validating the default settings and manually repeating the same tests over and over.

Ask yourself:

• How can I vary combinations of test variables to achieve greater test coverage?
• What user scenarios or configurations exist that are not commonly tested by manual testers, in automated tests or unit tests?

By shifting your testing approach a little, you’ll continue to find more bugs, provide better feedback to developers, and push the quality of the product higher.

Get More QA Testing Tips

If you're trying different types of software testing, remember this: better QA testing starts with better test case management.

But what does successful test case management look like? In "How to Succeed (and Fail) at Test Case Management", you'll get two examples of managing test cases. 

find out