Why I Love QAs
No, I don’t love them for acting as if they’re some kind of a police and for filing reports if they spot a deviation from some “standard certified” rules in the development process. I wonder if it makes sense at all to monitor software engineering processes for compliance to abstract guidelines written by someone who’s never seen how your company/org/team actually works?
No, I don’t love them for meticulously clicking through screens in the UI-heavy cases, even though this job does deserve to be admired. Also, I don’t love them for following established testing practices without ever having a thought of questioning or tweaking them.
No, I don’t even love them for writing automated test scripts; this is because some people view this skill as the only upper sky limit available to QAs. Neither do I love them for checking that a certain functionality is implemented exactly as in the specs.
My point is that with all of the above scenarios QAs are supposed to function rather as cogs in a machine, and not as thinking individuals who have a lot more in store than the skills of sticking with the rules and guidelines. It depends on an organization, of course, because in some companies QAs are regarded as human-shaped tools.
What is it that I love the QA folks for, then? It’s about their ability to see the big picture and to contribute to the quality of apps/products on all levels. I also love them when they keep a reasonable calm stance to bugs and glitches. Some QAs take it too personally if the count of WTFs per minute goes off the charts.
I love QAs for being curious people who go beyond the “human tool” identity which seems to be prevailing in the industry, unfortunately. A professional QA person is someone with the analytical and critical mind, who reaches deeper into the background of the job at hand, and this is not only about writing automated tests or about test-driven development. The QA’s Big Picture embraces anything that has to do with how a software/app/product serves the users. A truly competent QA will question irrational and/or dysfunctional practices, bringing issues to everyone’s attention, and suggest ways to do things better. This sounds like a mix of an internal auditor and an external agile coach, and not everyone will have it, but if a company manages to nurture such teammates in-house, the benefits are obvious.
I love QAs who have this thoughtful mindset in place, and I’ve actually seen some of them re-inventing themselves outside the traditional QA domain as DevOps, product owners, and technical support managers, to name a few instances.
The well-rounded QAs are precious in almost any activity of a softdev organization. They start from the bottom up and literally click their way through to the bigger picture. QAs excel at noticing the flaws that others might miss, and this combination of inherent responsibility + attention to detail +analytical mindset makes them both excellent problem finders and problem solvers.
P.S… if you’re reading this, and you’re a Developer, or anyone else, in any work role, who showcases the same qualities… my love extends to you, too :)
Further reading:
Career ideas for QA professionals
Curiouser and curiouser (the auto-spell checker underscores this in red, demanding that I write this as “more curious”. Alas, the spell-checker has no clue as to where this particular spelling comes from and what it alludes to. Fortunately, humans do.)
This article is based on an earlier story.
