The only good bug is a dead bug!
By Philipp Müller, Junior Technical Quality Assurance Manager
No one wants to have a blue baby because the newly purchased romper suit was not checked for staining beforehand. Also, no one wants to have their money collected by an online store, but not receive any goods because a technical error stayed undetected.
After all, it’s always better if we find errors on our own and fix them before a customer does, gets upset, reports to customer service or in worst case doesn’t order.
In this article, we would like to give you some insights into the Technical Quality Assurance of the Digital Intelligence department at Marc O’Polo: What do we do, how do we do it, and which systems must face our scrutinizing gaze.
The high standards that we have for the articles that we produce also apply to our technical infrastructure. As in textile quality management, where a wide variety of elements of the new garments are put to test (pilling, washing, lab tests, wear tests, etc.), we in the Marc O’Polo Digital Team examine not only the online store but also its individual components. This of course includes important basic functions such as completing an order and logging in, but also smaller components that round off the overall picture, such as the display of images, links or correct spacing between the individual elements in the shop.
Our approach to kill the bugs
The Tech QA at Marc O’Polo has two main tasks. The first task is to test newly developed features before release, using high quality test plans. Here, both the newly added functionalities and the existing core functions are checked. The second task is to document emerging bugs in the shop, create a meaningful ticket and pass it on to the developers with an appropriate priority.
Once the developer has fixed the bug or created a new feature, he submits the ticket to Tech QA. New features and bug fixes are tested on all common browsers and devices. We use the data from Google Analytics to decide on the devices we use for testing. Here we include different viewports to ensure a consistent experience on a wide range of screen sizes.
The human part of QA is supported by running unit tests of the DEVs before each deployment to our test environment. In the future, we will also be supported by end to end (E2E) tests, which automatically test the most important parts and components of the online shop several times a day. E2E tests give QA the chance to focus on less frequented areas of the shop. In this way, we ensure that even less frequent user journeys remain as free of bugs as possible.
Deployment process
Finally, after all successful tests, the release takes place. For this purpose, we push the code integrated in the ticket from our development environment to staging. Staging is a 1:1 copy of our live system. Here, the desktop and mobile viewport are tested one last time and the most important core functions are checked. Even if the code change does not affect an area in the shop, it is still tested. Better safe than sorry.
Finally, the release takes place to production. The first thing that is checked afterwards is a successful checkout and following that if the new feature or the bug fix works as expected.
Guardians of quality
Quality Assurance specialists are an important part of any development team. Errors are inevitable during development, but a QA team can minimize the number of problems and bugs before release. A bug identified in the testing phase costs much less than a bug found by users — our customers. So the earlier you involve a tester in a project and the subsequent development processes, the better.
We also give every employee the opportunity to submit bugs to us. In this way, everyone at Marc O’Polo contributes to the quality of our ecosystem and is positively impacting our customer satisfaction.
You want to shape the digital future of the fashion industry? Start creating with us. The Digital Intelligence & Tech Teams at Marc O’Polo are always looking for talented and driven software engineers, data engineers, data scientists, data analysts, ML Engineers or project managers to join our team. Learn about life at Marc O’Polo and visit our career site.
