99 Things You Can Do to Become a Better Tester - 2

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51. Look at Competitor products and benchmark the differences - Sandeep
Maher

52. Trust no one! In sense that what people say is not always what they
REALLY mean. So the more you conversate, the more you trust. But
your trust level is always less than 95% - Oleksii Burdin

53. Ask yourself (and answer) the fundamental questions like "why do we
need testers?","what is good testing?", "what should I document, why
and for who?"... The greatest value in questions like these is not the
answer but the thought process of getting to an answer. - Erik Brickarp

54. Understand what your customer wants, what he needs, communicate
the needs, agree with needs and deliver both of them. -Teemu Vesala!

55.But remember that people don't always need what they think they need.
Be prepared to think around the problem to deliver a solution to the
problem, not just what was explicitly asked for. - Joseph Brannan

56. If it doesn't exist: Start a community of practice or other forum there
you and colleges can talk testing, share ideas/experiences and improve
as testers together. - Erik Brickarp

57. Utilise your courage (and display it) and stand up for what you believe
in. Don't bend on your morals and ethics. Test the best way you know
how, despite being told otherwise. Before doing this... make sure you
have mortgage insurance. ;0) - David Greenlees

58. Embrace quality as a lifestyle, not only during work hours. - George
Motoc

59. Breathe as a tester, Live as a tester, Be a tester. Be a tester in all areas of
your life whatever it is at work, private life, relationships, hobbies or
others, 24/7, 365/year ( I give you 1 day rest on leap year ). - Gabrielle Klein

60. Never stop trying to become a better tester - Mauri Edo

61. Try to provide the solutions as well as finding the problems. -Geekonomicon

62. Think about as many different perspectives as possible!! - Dan Ashby

63. When reporting, try not to be seen as the enemy; assign blame to
systems and applications rather than individuals and stick to the facts.
Equally, emphasize the positives, and the efforts made to correct issues;
this time ignore the systems and applications and focus on the
individuals who got the defects fixed. - Joseph Brannan

64. Learn the difference between Severity and Priority - Dan Ashby

65.Would add to that and recommend that everyone in the company knows
what they mean by severity and priority. If people have different
understanding of these words then there's no actual communication. -Kinofrost

66. Accept that not all bugs you raise will be prioritised to be fixed - Steven
Cross

67. Everyone within the project team is responsible for quality - Steven
Cross

68. Testing should be fun so remain positive and get everyone within the
team enthused about the merits of testing - Steven Cross

69. Accept that Developers have a different mindset - Steven Cross

70. Be brave. You're possibly the only person(people) saying "Are you sure
you want to release this now because...?" - Vernon Richards

71. Don't repeat yourself. I learned this from the Pragmatic Programmer
although it means something different for testers: don't repeat the same
actions, don't follow the same path, the same order. Break your habits. -Philippe Antras

72. Ask experienced testers for feedback/help - Erik Brickarp

73. Flip that, and experienced testers should help less experience testers as
much as they can. It will help you and help the other tester. - Gareth
Waterhouse

74. Good point and to keep 'em coming: experienced testers can benefit
from asking less experienced testers to get a new/fresh view of a
problem, especially true when experienced includes very use to the
product being tested (in that case as a means to fight bias). - Erik Brickarp

75. Use the box itself to help you. Look at the edges of your box. Create a
bigger box, look at what is now in the box and decide what you might
want to follow up. Look at the edges again, can you push any of them
out a bit? What would you find if you did? Do quick, cheap, experiments
on stuff that seems unlikely to surprise you - because sometimes it will.

76. Use another pair of eyes to help - pair with someone, or try to grab
someone for a quick debrief if your team doesn't "do" pairing. - Anna
Baik

77. Leave your ego at home - maybe that amazing bug won't get fixed before
go-live. Trust that the person making the decision knows better than
you. - Amy Phillips

78. When you say, you're a tester, play your position, that position could
involve much more than just testing in a start-up. It might even involve
giving an opinion on the go/no-go decision. - Matt Archer

79. Respect programmers, designers, product owner and others involved.

80. Earn respect back by doing a great job and learn how to communicate
your results. - Erik Brickarp

81. +1 to this, specially do not feed the anger between testers and
developers, if you face it at some point in your career.

82. Go to non-testing technology events - Rosie Sherry

83. Reduce biases & unintentional blindness. - halperinko

84. Learn to take effective notes and document your testing in different
ways - models, mind maps, sketches and other approaches will all help
you gain insights and new perspectives on the system you are testing.

85. Build personal development time into your week - 5-10% or
approximately half a day a week sharpening your skills by reading,
practicing or learning a new skill will pay dividends.

86. See the bigger picture. How does your testing add value to your team,
project, organisation?

87. Learn how to use regex.

88. Learn how to use the command line. Shell and batch scripts too.

89. Learn a scripting language. Use it to automate repetitive tasks or
processes. Manipulation of text or data files for example.

90. Become an Excel power user. Functions, logic and conditional
formatting can all be used as powerful analysis and test tools.

91. Stop following test scripts and think - Stephen Blower

92. Hang out with developers, designers, managers - Rosie Sherry

93. Understand your business and customer needs, not just the
requirements - Mike Hendry

94. Understand your domain fully and as importantly your competitors -
Stephen Blower

95. Do not try to find errors or bugs - try to find problems and victims.
Testing is more than checking. - Thomas Lattner

96. Be prepared, you won’t catch all the bugs, but keep trying

97. Be prepared, all the bugs you raise won’t get fixed

98. Test what matters

99. Question the veracity of 1-98, and their validity in your context

100. Try always what happens when you violate the rules. So here's the
second sentence also.