Testing Challenges

It is human (people) nature to respond to any challenges thrown upon them. But what do human mean by a challenge?

Well one of the definition of challenge is ‘a demanding or stimulating situation‘. A challenge could be ‘a call to engage yourself in a contest‘. As a tester we face different challenges in our profession. These situations can be handled in a better way if we have the skills to analyze the problem and off-course by understanding how our fellow testers are tackling a particular problem in their unique context.

As a tester, we have some challenges which are very unique to our profession and some challenges are more generic in nature. A challenge has classified into two broad categories:

Analytical Challenges – These challenges are not unique to our profession and most of the professions require some degree of analytical skills. Analytic can be defined as “Having the ability to analyze” or “Ability to divide into elements and principle“, given the nature of testing it is very important for testers to have good analytical skills. Like any other skill, analytical skill can also be improved by practice. This skill can be improved by practicing different Puzzles, taking challenges or reading different books to improve your aptitude. Best mechanism of improving this skill is to exercise your brain.

Professional Challenges: Every profession has its own challenges. This section explains the different challenges faced in this field and how you can overcome them. These may be the interaction with the developer, attitude of Management towards testing, identification of tools, their usage and training, interaction with the customers, acceptability and entry-exit criteria for the tests and many more.