Doing Out of the box Software / QA Testing.

"You need to think out of the box." or "Develop your out of the box testing skills" is one common KRA (Key Result Area) that is commonly set in our appraisals :) So what exactly is out of the box thinking ability which a software tester needs to inculcate?

Well for starters, when managers complain about you not having "out of the box" thinking abilities, what they mean to say is that most of your testing is simple, and the defects that you are reporting are again simple. Think, if you have really caught some complex defects recently? How about the defects that were leaked in the latest release? Why were they missed? Did the existing test cases not cover them? If yes, then what testing should have been done to catch them earlier? Are you getting the picture?

• We tend to say a software tester has good out of the box thinking abilities when he is not constrained by the requirements, specifications or test cases. He goes beyond them.
• He uses his in-depth domain knowledge to his benefit by finding high quality defects, faster and frequently.
• He is able to connect the dots and ascertain the reason why the software is crashing, or behaving in a particular manner.
• He is able to reproduce the defects spot-on. He uses his experience in predicting which areas of the system are poorly designed or written to warrant spending more time for testing.
• He automates the tasks which can be automated so that his time is saved, and can be spent in testing manually other areas.
• He works in co-operation with the development team to understand more about the system internals, as well as get his reported defects fixed.

The above points are examples of what you can start doing to develop your out-of-the-box thinking abilities. Remember managers comment on this point only when they see you not adding value along their expected lines. So get started and out of the box :)