While you might truly care about product quality, all QA engineers tend to fall for these mistakes every now and then. Here are some habits that you should avoid to produce high-quality work.

1. 7 BAD HABITS TO AVOID AS A
QA ENGINEER

2. Why have testers gotten a bad reputation?
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Some software developers, product owners, and managers assume that quality
assurance (QA) engineers are people who wanted to be developers and lacked the
necessary skill or grit to succeed.
However, it is not necessarily true and most testers are people who genuinely care
about the quality of the product they are testing.
The bad reputation that testers have gotten is because of bad habits they have
developed over the course of their careers.

3. BAD HABITS THAT QA ENGINEERS
SHOULD ACTIVELY AVOID

4. Bad Habit 1:Testing things you
don't understand
We’ve all been there where you have to test a
code that no one is entirely sure what the code
does, how to change it, or what changes have
been made.
Here’s the problem with this scenario: How do
you know the developer is right? If the issue is
not fixed, and there is a failure in production, your
manager will come back to you with questions.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
Ask questions. Ask your developer to
explain to you how the feature works
and what changes were made to it.
Keep on asking clarifying questions
until you really understand what is
happening.

5. Bad Habit 2:Testing only what the
story tells you to test
Our development stories often contain
acceptance criteria (AC), which outline
exactly how the new feature or fix should
behave. Most often they contain only
“Happy Path” scenarios thus leaving out
test scenarios where bugs could be hiding.
Testers will often assume that the
developer knows best and will test only the
AC. This means that there may be critical
areas that are left untested and bugs left
undetected.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
One of the skills as QA engineers is
being able to think about what might go
wrong; you need to use this skill with
every story you test.
Before you sign off on the AC, ask
yourself, “Can I think of anything else to
test here? Is there anything I’ve
missed?” This will often help you find
bugs in areas that no one else
thought of.

6. Bad Habit 3: Assuming that odd
behavior is correct behavior
Often, when we are testing a new feature, we
run across behavior that doesn’t make sense.
Perhaps it’s an odd page refresh or a navigation
to a place we weren’t expecting.
It’s easy when we are testing on a deadline to
focus so much on the AC of the story that odd
behaviour gets pushed to the back of our mind.
You might think about asking the Dev about that
when the story is done and often forget it.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
Listen to your instincts. If the behaviour
is odd, there’s a very high probability
that end users are going to find it odd
as well; they may even find it so
frustrating that they stop using the
application.
If your instinct is telling you that
something isn’t quite right, document
your testing and speak up about what
you are seeing.

7. Bad Habit 4: Chasing things down
the rabbit hole
Sometimes QA engineers are so focused on
finding every single thing wrong with an
application, no matter how tiny, that they
wind up in “analysis paralysis” and bring their
team’s progress to a halt.
While some hard-to-spot bugs can be fun to
chase down, it often involves behaviours that a
user would never, ever do, and the bug itself
isn't particularly harmful.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
Focus on real-world use cases. Always
remember that our focus should be on
making sure that our software works
well for our users and that our software
is well-protected from malicious users.
If you find yourself going down the
rabbit hole, ask yourself if your time
could be better spent testing more
realistic use cases.

8. Bad Habit 5: Automating Tests for
the sake of doing automation
QA engineers who have learned how to write
automation discover that automating things is
fun. But automation is not always the answer.
By jumping into automation even before you
have understood the feature as an end user,
you can wind up automating tests that don't
exercise the feature well. You can also miss
key features.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
Take the time to do manual, exploratory
testing to get to know a feature. Ask
questions about how the feature will be
used. Think about what your end users
will do.
Find as many bugs as you can. Then,
start to think about how you should
automate it.

9. Bad Habit 6: Creating complicated
and flaky tests
While automating tests, do not automate
them like they were manual tests. This can
result in a lot of steps and implicit waits
making the tests extremely flaky.
The more steps a test has, the more likely it
is that some test step will fail, causing the
entire test to fail. This can result in a
tremendous waste of time.
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Good Habits to replace
them with
Automated tests should be simple, with
each test checking only one thing. Take
a look at your UI tests and see if they
could be automated with API tests
instead which are faster and more
reliable.
When a UI test is needed, be sure to
use explicit waits rather than implicit
waits to reduce flakiness.

10. Bad Habit 7: Accepting a poor
user experience
Sometimes, when we are working on a
deadline and have many stories to test, we
look only at the functionality of a feature.
But, it’s important to remember the end
users. If a user doesn’t understand what to
do on the page or finds that they have to click
several times in order to get something done,
they will be frustrated and won’t want to use
the product.
rockinterview.in
Good Habits to replace
them with
Always think of your end users when
testing your application. Find out from
your product owner what the expected
workflows are and run through those
workflows.
Ask yourself what you would think of
the product’s behaviour if you were the
end user rather than the tester. If the
behavior would frustrate you, advocate
for a change in the behaviour.