Countless projects with great potential have tanked as a result of the inability to achieve intended product goals within the specified time frame. While this can happen for a myriad of reasons, in the world of software development, QA engineers bear a great responsibility as gatekeepers of quality to ensure the products are ready for release.

Here are 7 software testing tips and considerations to help you prevent product release disasters as a manual tester.

1. Testing without understanding Requirements
2. Not Prioritizing Test Cases
3. Testing Only after you have deployed the code
4. Not reporting defects correctly
5. Not implementing traceability across the project
6. Not time-boxing exploratory testing
7. Not performing root cause analysis