Ways of Positive Remote Working For a Tester
The current COVID pandemic led to a lot of change for everyone at Bloom & Wild.
In March we all began to work remotely and this had its differences when compared to how we operate from our Vauxhall office. Luckily our culture and tools made it a relatively easy transition. The culture we have is built around our 5 core values. These are care, customer first, delight, innovation and pride. Across the business these values are at the forefront of everything we do. This coupled with a strong sense of support towards each other made going remote easier.
We saw all our meetings suddenly being hosted via Google Meet, as well as fully remote hiring and subsequent remote on-boarding for new starters.
Being a member of the Tech Team, working from home was not a foreign concept, however given the circumstances this was understandably a different experience.
As a Tester my initial thoughts were of slight concern. The questions I had circulating in my mind were:
“Would I be able to maintain the same working relationship with the Developers?”
“Would I still gain the level of clarity and detail required for me to work as effectively as I do from the office?”
“Would I be able to explain and demonstrate issues as quickly and efficiently as before?”
Luckily the business was in a position where we could continue to trade and we were in the very fortunate position that trading was also exceptionally good. Therefore, it was of paramount importance to quickly fit into the “working from home” mold.
This post looks to detail some ways in which I have been able to make my remote working experience enjoyable and productive at the same time. It also provides some solution to the concerns listed above, that other Testers in the industry may have asked themselves.
It was not long before remote working felt completely natural and this is testament to the great squads and wider Tech Team we have at Bloom & Wild. In that time I built good rapport and trust in my squad by building upon an existing “testing guidebook” created before lockdown to drive good test practice within the team. This included the team test approach and guiding principles, to name just a couple.
So, what were the ways in which I enforced this sense of positive remote working within my own squad?
Find the right way to demo bugs / issues that work for you and your team
Being a Tester, finding bugs is all part of the package. However, equally as important is being able to clearly explain and demonstrate the bugs to your fellow Developers / Product Manager. I like to adopt a flexible way of working which leans to the styles of different Developers. As a result of this, depending on who is working on a particular Pivotal card (Pivotal Tracker being our project planning tool), I would demo the bugs in the way which suited them. This means you both gain from the exchange. Together we use Slack screen share / calls, QuickTime Player videos and the more traditional (at Bloom & Wild) test spreadsheets and basic steps to reproduce in the Pivotal cards themselves.
Being able to utilise these methods on a card by card basis makes it easier and quicker to feedback your findings — the quicker the feedback, the quicker the resolution (we hope).
Increase your interaction making Developers more informed on the progress of your testing
An important aim I set out to achieve was not to create an “over the fence” approach whilst working remotely. It is important to have engagement from the moment a card is started to when I hit the accept button. As such, I give regular updates on my testing progress and most importantly when the testing is complete with a final status update. Having that closure means as a team we do not have to refer back to that card again until release time and I can focus my efforts on what else needs testing.
Be more vocal and realistic about what you will be able to test
My team at Bloom & Wild is the Post Purchase Team. The team’s mission is to make the flower gifting experience better by improving our customer experience and resolving customer issues. We are mostly a backend team who make changes in our Ruby on Rails monolith which we release around 3pm every day. As a Tester at times you want to commit to as many testing tasks as possible, however, there is skill in finding balance and committing sensibly to what you can test. Taking on too much without prior planning can lead to potential blockers in the form of cards not getting tested and with this in mind, and respecting the release marker, during the morning Stand Up I assess what is realistic to complete. This is done based on the context of the cards, their size and the risk attached to them. To judge the risk, I assess the areas of the code the card relates to and the impact it could have on existing functionality / other areas of the code base. I use the files changed within the Github pull requests to inform my assessment and from this I can form a judgement on the testing time required. Also, I consider an additional time buffer to debug / investigate issues before making the decision to reject and or revert the changes from the test environment.
Keep your stakeholders involved and more informed when features go live
In the context of my team, there are a number of internal stakeholders, namely our Customer Delight and Operations Team (to name a couple). It is just as important to keep channels of communication open outside of your day to day squad. As such, it is vital to ensure that you inform the relevant people in the business of the expected changes. As such, whilst working remotely, increase your time spent on sharing how new functionality is expected to work and when it will be released. I have done this with a series of video call demos. Extending this further, showcasing new features to your Team will increase knowledge sharing and inclusion.
Since you cannot physically walk over to your colleagues and explain what new features will be released, there is value in informing people earlier than you would do in the office. This can help avoid calendar clashes resulting in the stakeholders finding out later than you feel comfortable with.
Focus your time on the most important testing tasks
It is very important to strike a balance between the important over the immediate. Tackling this can help avoid burnout and reduce the amount of important testing tasks left to be completed.
My approach is to focus my time on all testing tasks related to the 3pm backend release and any other activities that add value to said release. All other tasks I consider as ‘post release’ activities which do not have time pressures attached.
Continue asking questions, with respect to your teammates time
Working from the office, it is easy to glance across the desk and see when a team member is free. As we adjust to remote working, we also adjust to different ways of time management. This may lead to an increase in teammate’s ‘focus time’. The Pomodoro Technique being an example. Testers often do not want to interrupt Developers when they are working on certain tasks. So how do you go about asking the questions you need to? Quite honestly, in the early stages of remote working I had a reluctance at times to ask questions in the fear I was disrupting the developers. But over time, asking questions as they came to me started to have benefits. I read a blog on TechBeacon which shared a great explanation:
Link: https://techbeacon.com/app-dev-testing/remote-testing-teams-how-overcome-key-challenges
“Because working remotely means that work happens asynchronously, it’s okay to ask questions as they arise for you — just don’t expect answers right away. Also, asking questions is a way to show that you are interested and want to be involved. And it’s just another way to interact with your team.”
So to recap, the ways that have helped me as a remote Tester are:
- Finding the right way to demo bugs / issues between me and my team
- Keeping Developers more informed on the progress of my testing
- Being more vocal and realistic about what I will be able to test
- Keeping stakeholders involved and more informed when features go live
- Focusing my time on the most important testing tasks
- Continue to ask questions, with respect to my teammates time
Remote Software Testing can come with challenges. So it is important that you acknowledge and overcome them as soon as possible. Hopefully, the points discussed above can help achieve that and make you a more effective Tester in your team.
Jon Welch -Tester at Bloom & Wild
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If you fancy joining us at Bloom & Wild then we have roles open for both testers and developers. Head over to our careers site for more details.
