THE OTHER GUYS
Buddy Cop films are one of my favorite movie genres. They are a popular subset of the action movie field, which always start with the two protagonists: often mismatched men who are polar opposites, thrown together by an overbearing superior. They don’t respect each other at first but gradually become friends as they work towards their goal.
You must be wondering now, “What the heck does this have to do with Dev or QA or Tech?”
Well, doesn’t this seem similar to when developers and testers are put into an Agile team and forced to work together?
Hold on!
Before diving further into the article, let me first briefly introduce myself. I’m Aarthi, QA Engineer for the Mobility Division at Zeals. A couple of months ago, I was working as an Automation engineer with the dedicated QA Automation team. Automating the existing manual cases and, at times, testing the developers’ features delivered at the last drop.
But then our company decided to adopt Agile as its development methodology, and here I am- a member of the Mobility Unit Scrum team- working along with developers and specialized members from other teams.
From what I have observed, there has always been a bit of animosity between the QA and development teams, which results in testers and developers struggling to work together swiftly. Be it the way they approach software development with different mindsets or they don’t understand each other’s work methodologies.
But that doesn’t mean it has to be this way, always! It’s no secret that both teams can make or break a project. Thus, CHiP(s)ing away the invisible walls can only turn out to be good. After all, the common goal of both is to have an end product free of errors and good quality for the customers.
On that note, let’s take a look at some tips I learned that could help developers embrace testing and how QA can become a developer’s tester by collaborating efficiently and eventually, well, hopefully, becoming BUDDIES!!
Shift-Left TANGO AND CASH!
Shift Left testing is nothing but testing earlier in the software development process. Development teams that shift testing left discover bugs earlier, enhance developer productivity, and increase release velocity by avoiding the lengthy and costly delays that occur when bugs are found at the end of the development cycle.
Imagine that the developers know what kind of tests the QA team will perform on each feature. Don’t you think it will help them become better at what they already do? Additionally, testers can parallelly get to work by beginning testing the codes. This can save a lot of time and prevent developers from making mistakes. After all, the sooner you detect & fix bugs, the more time, money and resources you end up saving.
Developers and Testing — The ultimate COP OUT (but not anymore!)
Despite our collective desire to do early testing, many developers are still hesitant to incorporate more testing into their process. It can also be intimidating for them as they didn’t join the company to test…they are developers after all ! But this doesn’t mean they don’t like testing at all . Instead, they believe it might slow them down and considering how many organizations still rely on dated, time-consuming, manual testing strategies; it’s hard to fault them for thinking that way.
QA cannot simply force developers to test. Neither human nature nor software development work that way. Instead, testers have to take the action.
Find creative and thoughtful ways to foster increased collaboration like asking developers to review the test cases and provide assistance with any setup or test planning that can make a better flow, mutual ownership of Test Automation scripts and Peer to Peer testing. Apart from that, make sure that manual test cases are easier to understand and be accessed by developers.
RIDE ALONG with ‘em tools
Like anyone else, developers want to work with their preferred tools and programming language - the ones they’re comfortable with and feel they can be most productive. Those tools are usually different from those traditionally used by testers. As testers, if we want developers to embrace testing more readily, it’s time we started meeting them where they are with the tools they want to utilize and (LETHAL) WEAPON(ize) them .
In our Scrum team, with the motivation from my Tech Lead , PO and developers, I have decided to adapt to Playwright-JavaScript and incorporate continuous integration (CI) using GitHub Actions(it is in its early stage of implementation). In this way, the developers can be proactively involved in automation testing work and strengthening it or reviewing the automation code.
Hopefully this could aid developers welcome testing and testers to empathize and revere their work, given that the developers are the ones to take on additional responsibilities. The least QA can do- is, create a comfortable environment within which they can do the work.
(POINT) BREAK Down Silos — Including my Own
QA can’t expect developers to embrace testing unless we can first break down the traditional silos and processes that have kept testers as individuals and; testing and QA as a function isolated from the other core teams and components that make up the software development process.
We can start by doing away with the dated notion that developers sit over here and write code, and the QA team sits over there and waits until the end of the delivery cycle to test that code.
Without stepping on each other’s toes, try to reach out and constantly update developers on what testing activities are taking place from the QA’s end. Start participating in code-reviewing, understand the testing efforts done by the developers, plan release Scheduling together — All aboard, it’s the RUSH HOUR!
THE HARD WAY — Expect Challenges
At the end of the day, we’re collectively trying to spur a paradigm shift- a complete and total reimagining of the way we think about the role of developers and testers and our relationship. Although there are many benefits to these practices, there are potential risks.
As with any shift of this nature, defying resistance and overcoming hurdles is the norm. So, let’s try to break the egos and foment skill share and teamwork between testers and developers and bring the best!
