I was going strong
With a post every workday. That fell apart this week.
Just been busy at work.
I’m a Software Quality Assurance Specialist. This means that for my day job I look at business and developer requirement docs, develop a testing strategy, and since I run solo on many of my projects I also execute the tests. I have training in various automation and load testing tools, though don’t get to use those tools anywhere near as often as I would like.
It feels like there is a big issue across the software industry, where QA is considered a roadblock to release. Developers feel that if they are doing their job right, then why do you need QA. This isn’t true. QA is not a roadblock to release, but a tool to ensure that the release is what it is supposed to be. Studies show that people are less likely to see their own bugs, and it is very easy for developers to implement what they think the business wants, and the business might agree to stuff on paper, but in actual implementation the business might have envisioned something different.
Quality Assurance should be involved shortly after a requirments doc is created. The sooner someone from ‘QA’ is looking at the project the sooner bugs can be found. That’s right you can locate bugs before anything is even coded. You can write tests (at least testing frameworks) before there is actually something there in front of you. And the sooner an issue is caught, the better it is for everyone, and the cheaper it is to fix.
I dream of one day being able to work for on a video game, to add my expertise into the release product of something that will bring joy and entertainment. You never know what the future may hold.
I don’t wish to be a software tester. Yes there is a difference. In small teams like the ones I have been working on my entire carreer the person who performs QA tends to also be the person who is the tester, but in larger environments like those I believe exist at Microsoft or hope exist at Blizzard-Activision, you have two teams one performing QA the other testing based on the direction given by the QA team.
Not all organizations think QA is a roadblock. Some treat them like an integral useful feature of the development process. Not many, but some do.
One day, I want to work on a project that people want, not that people need. People want to buy iPhones. People want to buy games. People want to buy new cars.
Nobody wants to buy what my company sells. They buy it because they need it, often because someone else told them they needed, not because they actually had a need.
I didn’t intend to indicate that all organizations see it like this. And I share the same dream. Work on a project making something that people want.