Qualities of a bad tester?

[Archana]

We often hear about qualities of a good tester. Any inputs on qualities of a bad tester?

[Kasper]

Look here:

Characteristics of A Bad Software Tester

[Andrei Domuta]

@archana, I like the question.

I’ll point out just 2 things that make a person a BAD tester:

1. Doesn’t understand the business.
Well, it kind of makes sense because if one doesn’t understand the business, he/she will find bugs which are irrelevant. And will lead to creating noise for the developers and the rest of the team.

2. Is too focused on finding bugs.
Well, you know the saying ‘The goal of a tester is not to find most bugs, but to get most of the bugs fixed’. When one is too focused on finding bugs, might miss out some other important aspects like the interaction with the BA or developers and getting the issues solved in a timely fashion.

These 2 things are essential to avoid. I learned this from my own experiences. I admit that in some moments I was a bad tester, myself 🙂

Cheers!
Andrei

[JerryWeinberg]

Over many years, the worst testers I’ve seen are those who lack courage and skill to communicate bad news in a way that will be listened to and acted upon.

Perhaps they don’t understand that finding and reporting a fault in the software is good news for everyone—much better than the later news that the fault has been lurking in the sofrware, waiting to harm users.

Or perhaps they have no self-esteem in other aspects of hteir life, so have no confidence.

Or they are afrid people won’t like them if they report faults.

Or maybe they lack skill at communication with other people.

All of these things can be remedied, if the tester knows what to work on and is given support to change them.

Jerry Weinberg (author of The Tester’s Library <https://leanpub.com/b/thetesterslibrary&gt; and many other books that address these unproductive qualities)

[Archana]

@andrei-domuta I agree. And I must admit that at times even I have focused on finding defects 🙂

@jerryweinberg Pretty interesting points there. Would like to go through the book some day.

[Santhosh Kumar]

The good tester should validate with every possible error and correctly detect error and coradinate with devloper

Selenium Training in Chennai 

[christy]

 

[mod: link already mentioned]

[mod: links to copied content from other TestHuddle article :-/]

[Jeremy]

Those given are some qualities that can be seen in many bad testers.

Some additional qualities of a bad tester that I have encountered are

1. The one that cannot think beyond:

• The written test
• The acceptance criteria
• The immediate work
• What the Developer/PO/PM told them to expect

2. The one that cannot extrapolate from incomplete requirements (this includes the inability or the lack of initiative to ask questions for clarification). <- I’ve been on projects where this is a must.

3. The one that will not understand what regression means. This is a willful rejection of attempt to understand or a willful rejection of what the tester needs to do, even if they know why.

With these, number 1 takes time to teach (this is on the level of months and years), number 2 can be encouraged and persistence to teach(a bit faster than 1), while number 3 is the one that requires either a change in expectation of the tester (which can occur in a larger test team) or a change in position for the tester.

[Archana]

Jeremy wrote:

1. The one that cannot think beyond: The written test The acceptance criteria The immediate work What the Developer/PO/PM told them to expect

Agreed. Very important of a tester to think and look beyond

[Author]

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