Know Your Mission

In order to perform effective and useful software testing, testers should essentially understand the core meaning of testing and what their mission is within each team. In our previous posts, we spoke a lot about testing and its purpose.

We would like to speak about another equally important issue: the mission of a tester. One thing to be clear is: as a tester, you’re a provider of information rather than a process killer.

We have previously stated that the owner of quality is the product owner, not the tester. As a tester, you are supposed to perform testing and provide the necessary information that keeps the product moving forward. However, your actions should not be aimed against the developers and should by no means block the development process. Test, report and go back to testing.

While our role might be somehow limited within the development team, you should understand that testers play a bigger role within the development process. How so? Note that even though we cannot be the voice of customers, we should perform testing on behalf of those who would be using our product. Therefore, to understand the needs of our customers and users we need to put ourselves in their shoes. This requires a lot of researching.

Doesn’t matter whether you work inside a development team or inside a testers’ team, you should always work to develop your and your colleagues’ expertise.

• Expand your knowledge as much as possible. For this reason, you can try to find a mentor, who will guide you all the way up to your career path.
• Attending various meetups is important too! And in case there are none in your community, be the initiator and organizer of such events.
• Go outside and speak with people. Research should be an integrated part of your work. Networking and socializing are proven to be useful enhancements of your knowledge on various products and user requirements.
• Needless to remind you to think critically and outside the box! These are skills that require continuous development. Critical thinking comes with experience, so, never stop learning!
• Invest some time studying or expanding your knowledge of programming, math, data representation, and analysis.
• Stick to your mission of information provider and focus on self-development first!