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Today, there exists sufficient literature to help the assigned tester in his work. Still some general statements are useful in dealing within the corporate world. The quotes listed have been useful to build a centralized test department in one of the larger European insurance companies
Some quotes - taken from experience
Test may be seen as one of the executive means of quality control in the software development process. Although there exist figures how much money can be saved by proper use of test, planning and executing proper tests for large software projects are seldomly enacted with the same care as the whole product development itself. (1998)
However, test remains one of these intangibles, where the human factor counts extremely high. Even, if we nowadays try to automate tests as much as possible there still remains the necessity to tell somebody that something's wrong. (1998)
The best tester is the one who gets the most errors fixed - in a given time. (1999)
Testing is management of risk. (not my own wording, but accepted in 2002)
Test coverage is a heavily misused term. (2003)
Load and stress tests may not have been planned. The results of a functional test might possibly show the failure to deal with user interaction repetitions. (2004)
More about testing
Some basic books that have helped me for the basics ...
Some vital links that will lead you to a great field of expertise:
James Bach's corporate site - home of heuristics, look out for the articles
http://www.satisfice.com
Bret Pettichord's Software Testing Hotlist , a collection of links to interesting software testing articles and sites.
~http://www.io.com/~wazmo/qa
Case studies:
The beginning of a test structure: Starting with test automation
The concept of a testcase data base: ABCD Application Based testCase Database
