If we work together to successfully accomplish the final product based on client’s requirements, the true potential and QA will be achieved.
Any software is bound to have bugs, so if all team members work together and share perspectives, expertise, and good practices, most of the high and critical defects of a system can be found and fixed.
3 Keys to working together
“Culture is a powerful element that shapes your work enjoyment, your work relationships, and your work processes” [1]
Collaborative work culture is essential, you should promote it in your work, and like any new habit, (exercise for example) it will be difficult at the beginning but if you do it for a long time, you will feel better, used to it and you will see the result of your effort.
Now between developers and testers, if the collaborative work culture is well implemented, the knowledge of code and possible errors will be shared. These are complementing perspectives, and both work to improve the software instead of breaking it.
“Testers and developers are not different, they just follow a different path to achieve the same goal.” [2]
How can we add a collaborative culture of work process? or how to learn to work together testers and developers?
After analyzing my work environment at MagmaLabs, our collaborative work culture and based on my experience, I found 3 easy keys to work together, developers and testers, I hope they help you as to me.
1. Communication. It is the base for an easy process. Both parties should participate in meetings, planning, requirement creation and share their own perspectives. All need to be heard. If you can start to work together since the beginning and do the research of a project, fewer defects could be missed.
2. Support. The best part of each one can be the missing part of the whole. Testing can not directly remove defects, nor can it directly enhance quality, there is no system that can be done without risk of failures. Developers and testers can’t work separately if you want to get a high-quality system. When you assume something and don’t ask, you could be failing and missing important things. Share expertise, experiences, best practices and perspectives. Finally always feel free to ask dumb questions, because no question is dumb at the end.
3. Documentation. Following a methodology and completing the respective deliverables are the key to success. When you have a guide and steps to create something, you will reduce the risk to make mistakes or personal assumptions. A lot of times you can get an understanding about something that was not clear enough or different to others, so if you write down on each respective deliverable (BDD, TDD, Test Plan, etc) and share it with everybody, you and all your team can see what are you doing, what will you do and what are you expecting that they will do. And a plus is if someone is missing then someone else can easily resume their respective work.
When this 3 keys meet, the highest potential and QA are achieved.
