My first 6 months at SwissBorg: Testing & QA at SwissBorg
Hey, I’m Emil Neshovski, and I would like to give a quick overview of my time leading the QA effort for the past six months in the payments team at SwissBorg.
SwissBorg has a multitude of different teams (we call them squads) and departments. Squads are responsible for specific features and areas of operation.
The Payments Squad
Our team is more backend oriented (although we also have mobile engineers), which means that the testing is more technically involved — this means keeping track and supplementing end-to-end tests with integration, API and unit tests, as well as thorough manual cross-device testing.
The payments squad is responsible for functionality such as deposits, withdrawals, integrating with other services (like banking services) and anything else related to payments and transactions.
Trust & Autonomy at SwissBorg
Our squads have autonomy when it comes to choosing how to work and which approach to use, which is one of the things I love at SwissBorg. The autonomy is not only at the squad level but also at the individual contributor level.
The company instils a sense of trust, which is both motivating and empowering — it lets you focus on the best ways to add value to the product and to have an enjoyable workday.
Testing & Releasing
This means that although we coordinate our work as QAs and plan the releases together, we can choose specific approaches to testing that best benefits the features we’re working on.
While we do use scripted testing and automation, I’m also a fan of exploratory testing, as these sessions can find issues (whether they’re functional bugs or UX problems) that otherwise automation tests and a test plan wouldn’t.
Of course, the approach to testing and development and the specific methodologies used are subject to change and adaptations as time goes on.
Day-to-Day Tasks
My day-to-day tasks involve beginning the day with a cup of coffee, checking out our JIRA board, seeing how the nightly automation runs are going, and then easing into the morning standup.
We’ve tried different standup formats — while some squads go by individual epics, others go person by person or are async.
Being a QA at SwissBorg is not related to only hands-on testing.
We’re quality ambassadors and therefore much of our work is about enabling the developers, designers, PMs and others to have a quality mindset at each step in the iteration of a new feature.
Whether that’s at the wireframe/design stage, setting the AC and user stories, or writing cucumber tests — we try to improve the quality aspect of the product at all stages of development.
The QA team at SwissBorg
It’s great to have several other highly skilled QA colleagues at SwissBorg, as we have a weekly sync where we do knowledge sharing in regards to new upcoming features, as well as lessons learned during testing.
Since we ship a product that encompasses multiple squads, it’s essential to have a workflow between us that leads to stable releases and to maintain compatibility between the code changes from the different squads.
Working Remotely
In regards to working remotely at SwissBorg — we try not to limit the interaction to the online realm only. We try to have an approachable, social dynamic, which means that although many are remote, we try to meet up in person at least once (if not more often) per year, or even have an occasional team gaming session.
I’m excited about the future we can bring as a wealth management platform, and I can’t wait to ship out all the awaited features we’ve been working on!
Do follow us on social media and give the app a try if you haven’t already.
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