Let say customer comes to a tester with a software which he thinks that it has bugs. Bugs needs to report before customer release in market. But Customer does not have enough time and resources to spend on testing efforts. Now as a tester with your expertise help a customer to take appropriate decision. Tester should help to her stakeholder by offering solutions like providing quality information, finding defects, using test techniques suitable to the context, training other testers, learning software or domain rapidly, testing application extensively with input/output values, risk based analysis, telling the truth about software to customer, etc. I think these are few of the services (I mean solutions) a tester should have belief of providing wide range of solution to customer’s problem.

Imagine your current Customer and his problem (time, budget, resources, marketing strategy, end user demands and testing skills), and think of what solution you can provide as a tester.

I agree with this definition
“A Tester vision should be “I can test any software, under any condition, in any time frame” but even in this definition no where it speaks about solution providing

Consider this example

I have been given a program to test.
The program states that it can add any two numbers.

Now I try adding two negative numbers, it throws error. I report that bug, but there is no
need for me to provide solution for it. There is no need for me to tell how to implement the
addition of two negative numbers.

One more example

I have been given a login screen to test

I find that forgot password functionality is not there. I report that forgot password functionality
is missing. There are thousand ways to implement forgot password functionality. But none of team members would except that I should provide solution to that problem. If I try to provide solution to that problem it’s like value addition. My main task is to find the problem not the solution to the problem.

If I fail to find the problem then I am in trouble. If I fail to give solution it doesn’t have
any impact on me as a tester.

In the project every one has a duty to perform and we can provide extra value addition only
if we do our duty properly.

Gaining knowledge (ERP, Retail, Marketing, healthcare) helps me to find out what’s going
wrong and what’s missing in the project. If we say that tester should also provide solution
to the problem, then tester can be named as tester + business analyst(BI)= TBI

Here what James is trying to say that a skilled tester is the one who provide solution with whatever resources, tools available at that time. If testers believe that he can give solution (here solution means the testing as a service) to various softwares Medical Software, Banking Software Or Scientific software. A Tester should not stop if she does not know about that area. She should believe that she can give wide range of solution to any kind of problem .Here problem is referred to the Software under test

A Tester vision should be “I can test any software, under any condition, in any time frame”

My thoughts on the definition you have mentioned

1.“You should not have a favourite weapon. To become over-familiar with one weapon is as much a fault as not knowing it sufficiently well. You should not copy others, but use weapons which you can handle properly.” – Miyamoto Musashi.

The above definition is really wonderful

2.My self-image and my pride as a tester lies mostly with my belief that I can and I should be able to see a wide range of solutions to nearly any problem. That’s what being skilled in this craft of testing means to me.”

I don’t accept with this definition. As a tester I find the problem in the system, but tester doesn’t provide any solution to the problem

Sticking to this one single mantra did help earn me the reputation of being this one meanie tester that you don’t want to mess around with !