10 useful tips for Software Testers

1. When testing, never tamper with the testing environment that you have set up.
2. Set up goals for yourself. Start each testing day with the aim of reporting maximum Bugs. Make the day worthwhile and try to add maximum value
3. Apart from following the test cases, allocate some extra time for exploratory testing of the application. Chose a section of the application and make sure that by the end of the day you have not left any part of it untested.
4.  Devise practical life scenarios that can aid in testing the application from different angles.                                                               
5.  No bug in application is small enough not to be reported. Be it application crashing or a minor issue of text alignment, report them all.
6. Bug reporting should be more efficient. Try not to merge too many issues in one JIRA. This way there is a chance that few important points can get overlooked.
7. Make sure the steps to reproduce for an issue are detailed and easy to follow. Do not miss out any detail so that the issue is easily reproduced at the other end, and minimal questions are asked from you during the workaround.
8. Review the Bugs reported periodically as it would help in making the test case updates process more efficient for future version.
9. Write all important observations during testing on a word document. It would help to save a lot of time while reporting bugs or creating new scenarios for testing
10. Most importantly, stay focused. The time you spend testing, keep your attention on the task at hand only as I believe testing is all about “Focus” and “intent of finding errors”.