Fostering a QA Mindset at ActionIQ
From the keyboard of Kristina Tyavlovsky , Senior QA Engineer at ActionIQ
When it comes to achieving Quality Assurance (QA) excellence, it’s not just about catching defects or testing scenarios — it’s about fostering a mindset. A mindset that places a high value and collective responsibility on value. In my journey with ActionIQ over the past four years, I’ve witnessed and actively participated in transforming our approach from outsourced testing to building an in-house testing culture, instilling a company-wide commitment to defect prevention and embracing the principles of a robust QA mindset.
Creating a high-quality product in the dynamic landscape of software development is an ongoing journey rather than a final destination. Let me share insights into the successful practices we’ve adopted to cultivate a QA mindset at ActionIQ.
Quality Infusion throughout the Development Cycle
Quality is baked into each step of the development cycle. It starts with a thorough review of project requirements and UI/UX mock-ups, ensuring clarity and a well-defined, feasible scope, followed by crafting a design document and detailed test plan that serve as a roadmap for successful implementation. The process includes setting up an alert management system, post-deployment validation, and creating internal and external support documentation. Each project undergoes a comprehensive checklist to guide the team in ensuring the quality of their work.
Shared Responsibility for Quality
At ActionIQ, QA is not just a role, it’s a mindset shared by everyone. While we do have a few dedicated QA professionals, they don’t act as gatekeepers or bottlenecks in the Software Development Life Cycle. Our QA team is a cross-platform force that facilitates efficient testing processes by building frameworks, defining strategies, and guiding engineers to meet quality standards. Engineers take full ownership of the quality of their deliverables, crafting detailed test plans and building automation tests. This culture of shared responsibility empowers every team member to contribute to the QA process.
Beating Murphy’s Law: “Whatever can go wrong will go wrong”
Our mantra is “Beat Murphy’s Law.” Before implementing a new feature, we proactively anticipate potential issues, assess their impact, and strategize preventive measures. We evaluate both product and project risks, focusing on areas prone to errors, low test coverage, lack of expertise, and high-impact changes. Switching to an 8-week cycle, with dedicated two weeks for detailed planning, estimation, and risk analysis, has helped us limit uncertainty, avoid blindsides, and stay focused where needed.
Continuous Improvement
Our commitment to “Continuous Improvement” drives improvement through learning from mistakes and analyzing feedback. Regular incident review sessions and deep analysis of missed issues help to identify gaps in testing, continuously refine our testing and development processes, and foster a culture of learning from mistakes. Regular collaboration with stakeholders (product managers, professional services, and customer success partners) and bi-weekly engineering demos provide valuable feedback and help to identify corner cases and gaps in features.
Faster Feedback
In ActionIQ we are working toward adopting the “shift left” move, pushing testing toward the early stages of software development. By testing early and often, we’re getting early feedback, which reduces testing costs and the cost of fixing issues. Modern approaches, such as incorporating Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and a mix of custom and commercial testing tools like Cypress and K6, have made this shift possible. Kudos to the Infrastructure team for integrating these technologies into our development experience.
We continue on this journey, with the QA mindset remaining at the forefront of our efforts to ensure that every release reflects quality and excellence. The intermediate results? A 60% reduction in testing environment costs, and improved test, build, and deploy time leading to a better development experience. Every new feature on the ActionIQ platform undergoes rigorous testing, backed by a safety net of automated tests running on Continuous Integration (CI) and built-in observability. Better product quality directly translates into improved customer experiences on the ActionIQ platform, contributing to our best-in-class reputation.
Kristina Tyavlovsky is a QA Tech Lead at ActionIQ. She’s passionate about seeing high-quality systems go live and bridging the gap between technology and stakeholders. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, skiing, and spending summers on Cape Cod.
ActionIQ is a leader in the massive and fast growing category of Customer Data Platforms (CDP). Our product brings order to customer experience (CX) chaos. ActionIQ’s CX Hub empowers everyone to be a CX champion by giving business teams the freedom to explore and take action on customer data, while helping technical teams regain control of where data lives and how it is used. We are backed by top-tier VCs Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and March Capital. Enterprise brands such as Autodesk, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, Hertz, Atlassian and many more use our CX Hub to achieve growth through extraordinary customer experiences.
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