Be The Engineer That QA Loves
The love-hate story between software and QA engineers is too much. Divorce is common. It’s time to make the relationship a successful one.
- Trust
This is the foundation. Without trust, suspicion is endless and it won’t create a healthy relationship. We, as engineers, should trust the QA team that they are there to improve our deliverable quality. So, if they’re asking (or demanding even), we know it’s for our goodness and not because the QA hates us. Just be positive about it.
2. Don’t give them anything
I know this seems counterintuitive. But, hear me out and you’ll thank me later.
What do we always give them? Yup, features, codes, and more features. Not really a present anyway per se. So, if we’re actually not giving them a present, can we just give them something that at least they are happy to receive?
I mean, can we please test our features first? It’s not even testing the edge cases we’re talking about here. But can we just test the basic functionalities before we ship our feature to them?
And don’t bring the “it’s their job to test” excuses. It’s disrespectful. Their job is to assure your feature quality, not to babysit our laziness and point out all of our mistakes.
Better yet, if we want to take it another notch, then as Uncle Bob said “The QA should find nothing”. No bugs. Zero. Then, they will love you in a heartbeat.
3. Be Vulnerable and make them feel special
Oh yes. Our partner really likes when we put a confession how vulnerable we are without them.
We can tell to our QA “your presence brings the best of me”. Yes, do it. =)
The main purpose is, of course, to let the chemistry sink in. The QA will feel special, valued and respected by us. Not just some bug catchers in the company. Because they aren’t. They are the ones that can elevate our skills and our awareness. They are the ones that can assure that our product is loved by the users.
4. Make it easy for each other
The lower the number of mistakes, the happier the relationship. So instead of waiting the mistakes to happen, why don’t we prevent the mistakes in the first place?
When we’re asked to create a new feature, we can ask QA to help us with some list of related pitfalls.
For example, there is this new awesome feature that shows a “Hello, World!” in our main page. Then, QA can come up with some related pitfalls such as:
1. The ‘H’ is written in capital
2. Don’t forget the comma after “Hello”
3. The ‘w’ is also written in capital
4. The exclamation mark at the end
If we still make mistakes, even after we receive these 4 points, then maybe we’re not made for each other?
But honestly, stop blaming the fate. What about to realize that we should improve ourselves?
You made it this far? Seems like you’re serious in making the relationship work. Wish you all the best.
Thanks for reading!
