How to overcome drawbacks and enjoy the job of a software tester?

Question

Dear all, One notion that has been prevalent mostly as rumours for many aspiring programmers is that the testing phase of the SDLC(Software Development Life Cycle) is not that challenging and interesting as one's job as a tester after a period of time becomes monotonous because a person does the same thing repeatedly over and over again. Boredom is a very important issue a software tester has to deal with. With regard to this I have the following questions:

• How can one overcome this in their day to day activities of their job as a software tester?
• What are the possible new avenues a tester can explore on a general note in a s/w co. ?
• Could you also please highlight what challenge's a tester could also face in real life situations.Something that would make their job also interesting and fun-filled.

Thanks..:)

Answer 1

This should be Community Wiki I suppose.

Apart from that, I think that going towards automated testing makes the job for a software tester much more interesting and also more productive. Creating good and stable test scripts is pretty much as hard as writing good software and it should not get too monotonous either.

Answer 2

Automation is good, but one thing that most people forget is that tester should change project every few months. Let's say 6, and for usability testers every 3 months. While managers and other people think it's stupid to change tester just after one have gained business knowledge and knows application well. Reason for this is simple: over time tester will loose ability to find that many defects in given software. Tester that has been staring at the same screens for a long time won't see things that new (but not newbie) tester will see immediately.

Fresh pair of eyes lets you see more, fresh mind lets you ask new questions.

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I jut thought I can add something from my experience:

• As Lucero said, automation is really fascinating and challenging, but it shifts you away from testing;
• Trying new way of working, like agile (for me it was Scrum) gets you going few more months;
• Trying new test techniques, especially exploratory testing is great;
• Try to coach new testers, teach them, make presentations.

In the end if you get burned out... shift to project or team management...

Answer 3

You also need the right mindset to be a software tester. The job of the tester is not to prove that the software is error-free. It is to find the errors that are surely there. I used to work with a tester who set himself the personal challenge on every project that he would find 100 bugs. If he didn't find at least 100 bugs, he considered that a defeat. Sometimes he had to stretch the definition -- like calling a mis-spelled label a bug -- but he usually made it.