Patience and Perseverance
Qualities you need to be a good software tester.
As most software packages are aimed at the unknowing public, someone with basic understanding of a computer, and a person that uses it on a regular basis would make an ideal software tester. The reason for this is that although technical people can critique the structure of a program, a personal user is the end market for the product and as an end user, the individual can give valuable feedback about how user friendly the product is.
Members of the public that test software should never be given more instruction on the testing of that software than the public would. Presenting a computer user with an end product, boxed and with instructions that would be available to the public, would enable them to go through every stage of that product in an effort to determine the aspects of usage that will be difficult for an average user, and to report back, so that when the eventual product is released, the Company making the software have a better idea of its' efficiency and use by someone that would be a potential customer.
I have tested games whilst in the development process and was able to point out the weaknesses against other similar products, and also to inform the developers of ways in which they could make their product better than the competition, not from a technical aspect, but from a users aspect, which to me is more important.
Testing products on technical people seems to defeat the object of the exercise. Testing on the public would give a better and more detailed explanation of the difficulties that an end user would encounter, and gives the production team the valuable feedback they need in order to improve.
To capture my thoughts, a good simile would be to ask a woman to design and test run a kitchen. It is the end user that finds the faults, not the clever clogs technicians that make the differences that matter to the user. Using my method, what you create is user friendly programs that give less need for technical support, and therefore in the end save developers money. Makes sense. Take it further than that, and a good software tester should be able to provide a valuable insight because they can take the program as if they were a consumer, and try it out just as the end user would. Often those who work with producing software forget that they are already accustomed to the workings of the software and cannot see it as a consumer would.
The consumer can point out small things which a developer may not notice and be able to write a very detailed report, whereas the development team may have a bias toward their software based on past experience of testing it before it came into production. Therefore, it makes sense to let members of the public try it out, as this is where real insight is to be gained, and where developers learn to produce more user friendly software.
