10 Tips to Survive and Progress in the Field of Software Testing

These tips not only survive but also advance you in your software testing career. Make sure you follow them:

Tip #1) Written communication – I repeatedly saying this on many occasions that keep all things in written communication. No verbal communication please. This is applicable to all instructions or tasks given to you by your superior. No matter how friendly your lead or manager is but keep things in emails or documents.

Tip #2) Try to automate daily routine tasks – Save time and energy by automating daily routine task no matter how small those tasks are.
E.g. If you deploy daily project builds manually, write a batch script to perform the task in one click.

Tip #3) 360 degree testing approach – To hunt down software defects think from all perspectives. Find all possible information related to the application under test apart from your SRS documents. Use this information to understand the project completely and apply this knowledge while testing.
E.g. If you are testing partner website integration with your application, make sure to understand partner business fully before starting to test.

Tip #4) Continuous learning – Never stop learning. Explore better ways to test application. Learn new automation tools like Selenium, QTP or any performance testing tool. Nowadays performance testing is the hot career destination for software testers! Have this skill under your belt.

Tip #5) Admit mistakes but be confident about whatever tasks you did – Avoid doing the same mistake again. This is the best method to learn and adapt to new things.

Tip #6) Get involved from the beginning – Ask your lead or manager to get you (QAs) involved in design discussions/meetings from the beginning. This is more applicable for small teams without QA lead or manager.

Tip #7) Keep notes on everything – Keep notes of daily new things learned on the project. This could be just simple commands to be executed for certain task to complete or complex testing steps, so that you don't need to ask same things again and again to fellow testers or developers.

Tip #8) Improve you communication and interpersonal skill – Very important for periodic career growth at all stages.

Tip #9) Make sure you get noticed at work – Sometimes your lead may not present the true picture of you to your manager or company management. In such cases you should continuously watch the moments where you can show your performance to top management.
Warning – Don't play politics at work if you think your lead or manager is kind enough to communicate your skill/progress to your manager or top management. In that case no need to follow this tip.

Tip #10) Software testing is fun, enjoy it – Stay calm, be focused, follow all processes and enjoy testing. See how interesting software testing is. I must say it's addictive for some people.