Being a software tester, you might face situations that challenge your efficiency and effectiveness as a tester. Testers must be aware of the hurdles, mistakes and traps that they may encounter in their lives.

2. Being a software tester, you might face situations that
challenge your efficiency and effectiveness as a tester.
Testers must be aware of the hurdles, mistakes and traps that
they may encounter in their lives. Following are the top 5
traps that you will ever run into in your software testing
career and also the ways to overcome those traps.

3. 1. Unaware of the Testing Goal: Sometimes you fall into a
situation where you have no idea about the new or enhanced
features that needs to be tested. So the tester might fail to
recognize the goal when a new functionality/ project needs
to be tested. However, if one doesn’t understand in the
beginning, it might produce concerns later in the execution
and planning phase.
Way out: Before the project starts, testers must ask related
and significant questions to clear all doubts. Try sharing some
envisioning ideas with the team and consider their thoughts as
well. Last of all, testers can go through the available
documents related to their project before going forward.

4. 2. Short on Ideas: It’s a common problem, specifically in
complex projects where you need to arrive with some fresh
ideas. On the other hand, sometimes testers get exhausted
that they fail to decide what needs to be tested next? This
situation is often stated as ‘tester’s block syndrome’ where a
tester is not able to discover new defects and bugs.
Way out: Testers can try carrying out pair testing to generate
new ideas. Moreover, Brute Cause Analysis (BCA) also
ascertains to be helpful where one can identify the areas
where this bug can appear and the other can take a bug.
Tester can also think of something divergently.

5. 3. Unconfident after Identifying a Bug: A bug can puzzle a
tester with something wrong that he might have done while
testing a project. One can think the other way and fails to
get the bug noted under his/her name if he/she is not
confident enough.
Way out: They must trust themselves as a tester. If they are
experienced, they must follow their instinct and report the
issue to the development team. Also, they can take a break
and get the scenario tested with fellow tester or try starting
fresh.

6. 4. Unable to detect a conspicuous Bug: Testers can get
themselves in huge embarrassment, if they fail to track a
clear bug. Anyone can face this situation, particularly while
religiously following the test cases or testing checklist.
Way out: From time to time, it is necessary to stop following
the test case blindly and think differently. Even if testers are
following the test matrix and test case, they must be smart
enough to discover other areas other than their test case. For
example, changes in color of a button after you click it, weird
sound after you click a button, try looking for a trembling
object etc.

7. 5. Unable to decide what and what not to test during
Smoke testing: As the project gets more complicated and
deadline approaches, a time comes where testers need to
decide on what to skip and what to test? The situation could
be quite challenging as they need to prioritize the testing.
Way out: First, recognize existing and critical bugs. Get more
input from the developers on the issues and try reading docs,
manuals etc. related to the project. This will help testers
identify the things that are difficult to end users. In addition,
pick a critical test item and get completely involved. You can
quit in case it appears too tough. This Dive In/Quit approach
must be implemented once you have exhausted all your ideas.

8. Due to the inherent nature of complication of modern day
communications and software systems, software testing is
turning more complex. As a result, more effective and
efficient techniques and methodologies and testing
heuristics, need to be developed. If you are not progressing
rapidly enough as a tester then the chance of failure is very
high and you should be prepared to face failure once in a
while. After all, we are testers; not magicians! But if you are
learning from your past mistakes, updating your testing
heuristics and upgrading your testing skills to correct those
mistakes so that they never happen again, I think you should
be fine.