Here at Aspiritech, we believe in success through training, support, and promoting a company culture of knowledge sharing and peer learning. Below some of our Quality Assurance Analysts and Quality Assurance Project Leads put together some Tester Tips. These Tips reflect advice based upon their experiences testing software, hardware, apps, AI functionality, and websites for our clients. These tips shed light on technical issues, best practices for collaboration and communication, and the proactive steps our team members take to assure the best client experience and outcomes.
"If you find an issue that's not part of your current test, report it anyway."
“Even if a feature of a product is working as designed, it can be useful to raise concerns about the feature if it creates a negative end user experience.”
“I always keep track of every action I take, every click I make, the time I wait between each action, and any oddity that may come up. You never know when you will come across a critical issue, and if that ever happens you’re going to want to remember the exact steps you took before the issue occured.”
“Every single test case written has many different ways to complete it with respect to timing. If the test case is ‘click the home button to get to the home menu’, most people would take the most obvious/natural path forward to complete the test. However, ‘click the home menu’ can be interpreted in many ways. What if you hold down the home menu for 5 seconds before releasing the button? What if you click the home button as quickly as possible? Every test is open to variations in timing, and sometimes using unusual timing will reveal entrances into important defects.”
“Just because something technically ‘passes’ a test, if the user experience is unsatisfying, we still bring it up to the client.”
“For example, if in a test you click a function button and the device takes 7 seconds to react to your click, the test technically passed, but the 7-second delay is too long to wait in a world full of impatient users. It’s not our job as QA Analysts to interpret what is or isn’t a defect, it is our job to find what may be a defect and communicate any possible issues to the developers.”
“Be sure the instructions, test descriptions, test environment and expected results for each test are clear and appropriate for the objective.”
“If it’s not clear why a test is being done, check with the testing manager or client beforehand. Accurate QA testing has to be appropriate for the objective or service concern being tested.”
“If you don’t understand something about a test, ask a team member, job coach, or the client for help.”
“When learning a process or set of terminology, get a sheet of paper to physically write out the list of steps.”
“If you’re afraid you’re failing at comprehension during your training, or you can’ see how you’ve progressed, don’t be afraid to ask your trainer for assistance. They can also help provide perspective.”
“It is important to build strong working relationships and establish a good rapport with our primary contacts on the development teams.”
“Things work best when communication is prompt, fluid, and easy. In this line of work, maintaining a good relationship between developers and QA is of the utmost importance, since our job is essentially trying to find (for lack of a better term) “flaws” in something the developers have often invested a great deal of time and effort to build.”
"Educating yourself on the changes that went into the software build under test is key, when trying to make sure you have adequate testing coverage for areas or features that may be impacted by the software changes.”
These tester tips offer a sliver of the knowledge and wisdom that the whole of Aspiritech’s 100+ neurodivergent Quality Assurance Analysts possess. Whether you struggle with self-confidence, collaboration, want to improve your technical testing abilities, or all of the above, our company offers support and education. Because our employees and team members feel safe, supported, and well prepared, we guarantee quality service and impeccable testing. We deeply feel the importance of our work and the trust that our clients put in us to get it right. To us, user experience matters most, and we know it does to our clients too.
