Quality Assurance process is not just about finding bugs and reporting bugs, and the automation tests are not just a code that is written based on some steps that are written in a test case. The harder part of this process is to develop a QA mindset. The QA mindset is all about thinking critically, anticipating the unexpected, and constantly asking:
“What could go wrong? What happens if…?”
A good tester thinks about how the product could break, not just how it’s supposed to work.
Some of the key traits of the QA mindset are: curiosity, skepticism, empathy, attention to detail, and thinking in scenarios.
Curiosity
When we are talking about curiosity, we are not talking about curiosity to check if the scenario is working correctly based on the written acceptance criteria. Curiosity means exploring beyond the “happy path.”. You are not just accepting behavior — you’re investigating it, by going deeper into the scenario and uncovering issues that others can miss.
- What happens if I skip this field?
- What happens if I enter special characters (%, &, @)?
- What if I enter an emoji?
- What if I exceed the max character limit?
- Can I enter only spaces?
- What if I turn off the internet mid-action?
- Does this still work properly in dark mode?
- What happens if the session expires?
- What if I rotate the screen?
- Does it behave the same in Chrome, Firefox, and Safari?
- What if I refresh during an operation?
- What if a user with limited permissions accesses this page?
- What if I hit “submit” twice quickly?
These are some of the questions that you can curiously ask yourself and test them in the app.
Skepticism
This isn’t about negativity, it’s about protecting the quality of the product, and it’s okay to ask why and what if. You’re not just verifying the app features, you’re questioning assumptions, decisions, and implementations to ensure that the product is genuinely ready for users.
- Is this requirement clear enough?
- Are we missing edge cases?
- Is the acceptance criteria complete and testable?
- Could this fix break something else (regression)?
- What happens outside the ideal flow?
- Were performance, usability, or security tested?
- Is the data saved, or does it just look like it is?
- Is this error message understandable for the average user?
- What if the API returns unexpected data?
- Can this cause data loss or inconsistency?
These are some of the questions that you can ask as a QA based on your skepticism. They can help you to uncover risks, prevent bugs, and catch flawed assumptions before they cause real damage.
Empathy
This means putting yourself in the shoes of the person using the app, not as a tester, but as a real user. By testing all the scenarios and thinking as a real user, and always having in mind what a real user does.
Also, as a QA, you are in the same team as the developers, and you are working together as a team. So you need to empathize with the developers. It is very important to build trust and mutual respect, to eliminate finger-pointing, and to encourage developers to take QA insights seriously.
Instead of this:
“This is broken.”
Use this:
“Hey, I noticed this isn’t working as expected — could it be related to the last change?”
If you work in a team where there are multiple QAs, try to pair on complicated bugs, review each other’s test cases, respect different testing styles or specialties in the manual, automation, and exploratory testing.
Attention to detail
As a QA, you don’t need to look just at the big picture. You always need to zoom in the things to see all the little details that might be missed. Attention to detail is about noticing not just if something “works,” but if it works smoothly, correctly, clearly, and completely.
Examples of Great QA Attention to Detail
| Situation | A QA with Strong Attention to Detail Might Notice… |
|---|---|
| A new user signup flow | The confirmation email has a typo in the subject. |
| An error message displays | But it’s too technical (e.g., “500 Server Error” instead of “Something went wrong. Please try again.”). |
| A dropdown menu works | But it’s not sorted alphabetically, making it harder for users to find options. |
| Dark mode looks good | But one button still uses the light theme color and becomes unreadable. |
| A transaction succeeds | But the loading spinner keeps spinning in the background. |
| Data is saved correctly | But no success message or visual feedback is shown to the user. |
| A web form functions | But input fields don’t show placeholder hints (e.g., “Enter your email”). |
| A button triggers the right action | But the clickable area is too small on touch devices. |
By paying attention to all of these tiny details, you can significantly improve the quality of the app, the user experience, and you will significantly stand out in the QA world.
Thinking in scenarios
Testing is not about thinking step by step. As a QA, you always need to think about the context, the complete scenario, and you always need to think about how the feature could be used, broken, misused, or even misunderstood, and explore all the ‘what if‘ scenarios.
Thinking in scenarios helps you to find more meaningful bugs early, to cover cases the developer or PM might not have thought of, to build stronger test cases, and to make the product more reliable.
Always ask yourself:
“Where could this break if a real human did something unexpected?”
🧠 How to Develop the Tester’s Mindset
🛠 Practice Exploratory Testing – Testing without a script and thinking creatively about all the possible scenarios can help you develop a good QA mindset, and it will teach you to think critically.
📖 Analyze Bugs – Analyze past bug reports and think about how that bug could be prevented, was it included in the automation testing suite, why it wasn’t found earlier, etc.
💬 Talk to Developers and Product Managers – Keeping good communication with the team can help you in sharing knowledge, learn more about the features that should be developed, how the customers are using the app, and it will help you in creating more effective scenarios, etc.
📋 Practice Writing Test Cases – This activity can help you develop critical thinking. Don’t just write and test what’s obvious — include edge cases, negative cases, and conditional flows.
🌐 Join QA Communities and Blogs – Read QA blogs, forums, LinkedIn posts, and join in QA communities. You can exchange opinions, see how others are thinking, you can learn something new, and you can also be active in these communities. You can share your own stories, your knowledge, can write your post and contribute to the QA world.
If you want to be part of this blog, send me whatever you want to share, and I will post it.
