As a blackbox tester, while giving my testing status to the management, i usually refrain from saying that a particular feature, enhancement of defect is "working fine" and say that it seems/appear to work fine, as of now.
Is it unprofessional or not a good practice to say these words?
It depends
What matters is that you are able to effectively communicate the current state of the software in test to your leads and management. How you communicate that information will depend on your workplace culture and any regulatory requirements your employer needs to meet.
The biggest potential issue I see with the way you are currently communicating status is that it implies a lack of confidence in your testing - even though everyone here knows that we can never be 100% sure a bug fix or feature implementation is working correctly. People in management tend to prefer overviews with decisive statements.
Some suggestions for you to consider:
Depending on the circumstances, I will use any or all of these heuristics when reporting test progress. I tend also to keep it to stating facts, for example: "All known paths through Feature X have been tested. There are no outstanding bugs reported against Feature X."
In the ideal world you as a tester should say "The actual behavior of the application under test corresponds to the given requirements".
However to make that ideal situation having the place you at lease need those "requirements" which have to be comprehensive enough and unambiguous. This is quite hard to achieve in the real world especially in "agile" environments.
This is also dependent on the current phase of the project. Saying "it seems working fine" is okay on the early phases but it is better to avoid on the final stages.
It is also worth mentioning that whether you say one opr another it would not change the actual state of the app. You should take that into account and in the each particular case you should keep the balance between the stakeholders assurance and your reputation which your words, deals and results compose.
"Working fine" and "seems to be working fine" will be interpreted identically, it's obviously based on your personal observations when it's you saying it.
If you want to improve report quality, say "X thing did Y, as expected". Then developers know if your concept of "fine" is the same as theirs.
I was a lead of an Agile-ish dev team for a couple years. The environment was pretty informal, and for me I would understand either of the statements you're giving as the same thing.
What communications did arise regarded the following:
If you're working with a very new or very-unfamiliar-with-software manager, then the difference between "it works" and "it seems to be working" might possibly need to be explained re: what software testing can accomplish, but the bigger question is whether you're answering the question the manager is asking. And I think you might not have this question if you and the manager were on the exact same page when it comes to what exact testing is being performed, because otherwise you could just say that your test cases worked without wondering if they thought you were over-promising on how defect-free the software was.
Kate Paulk's answer above has a really methodical way of breaking down what's going on, but for an informal conversation IMO it would probably be better for you to ask the manager what they're most concerned about and tell them what you have and haven't tested related to that.
Anyone in a decision-making position should already understand that those two statements mean the same thing when spoken by a tester. If they don't, someone needs to help them understand what software testing can and cannot accomplish.
“it seems/appears to working fine" shows lack of confidence.
When a tester says that a functionality is "Working Fine"; it's implicit that it's "with respect to the requirements"
The best thing to say is "Working fine" or "No. Not shippable because of XYZ reasons". If somebody tells says that a feature "appears to be working fine.", then the manager's question might be "Are you not certain?"
I do believe that there might be some bugs that even testers might miss. But once testers have tested a functionality, there is some level of sound agreement or disagreement with respect to adherence to the requirements; that is expected.
Which I believe; is perfectly fine.
More likely then not there are still defect to be found but this factual true is not really useful and can cause anxiety.
Two different ways to put "working fine" are "All the tests passed/are green" and "I found no defects".
If you think that the test coverage of the functionality is low you should say so to the Test Manager.
I think a tester should be more precise regarding the status of testing done for a giving feature\bug fix. Saying either "working fine" or "seems/appear to work fine, as of now" gives no indication of the level of testing that has been done.
Something like this I think gives the management more information
