Software QA folks...

Society Business and Career
1

are you one?

have some questions…

shukran

2

I was one as an QA intern ... shoot the question.

3

thanks ahmadjee :slight_smile:

hmmm…actually, the thing is i’m planning to transfer to the QA dept of my company and i just wanted to ask what kinda job QA is…

i’ve never done QA but have been told its much simpler and less technical than software dev

part of the reason i want to transfer to QA is coz my degree is in computer science and i feel like i’m losing touch with software dev and i wana get back in touch with it inshallah and not let that knowledge go to waste

yet i dont think i want to go into full fledged hard core software dev right now, tho i might in a couple months..im just trying to make it a slow transition

so i wanted to know i guess if being a QA developer will solve that purpose of getting refamiliarised with software dev?

also…i was gona ask u what kind of prospests there r for QA developers? and is it considered a better job than software dev or are they considered the same pretty much?

thanks a lot :k:

4

In software development cycle Q.A is not necessarily going off a checklist and making sure things are working as they are supposed to. Sometimes you have to write scripts to make sure data integrity is preserved. You release the product and if things go wrong, you are accountable. What kind of software company are you working for?
I am just curious…why do you keep coming back to development side when you know you could be better at something else? Have you considered technical writing..busness administration…?

5

Fayz thanks for the reply :k: hmmm, don’t QA ppl use predeveloped tools. i think in our company till now we don’t write scripts. but maybe if i like QA i’ll look for more demanding and challenging QA projs. our 'QA is very basic and pretty much just testing. i guess it’ll also be upto me how deep i wana go into it as right now the QA dept is new.

our company? hmm we provide e-learning solutions and we’re basically working on a GUI framework and some database stuff

why i keep going back? hmmm
actually btw my job right now is totally unrelated to software dev… yet i don want to waste the time i spent learning how to code in college…so i do wana come back to it…i get a guilty feeling that i worked hard at that stuff for 4 yrs and im just wasting the knowledge n i might forget it…jus coz i think i don’t enjoy it..? maybe i am biased. i shud give it another chance. plus i shudnt be a slave to my laziness and i shudnt be taking the easier way out. a person can enjoy whatever they want to enjoy. its all abt attitude i think.

khayr i just wanted to give it a try :slight_smile:

tech writing? again, its not related to my degree. there’s no advancement in this field.

business administration? hmm maybe in a couple yrs, not now tho…might go for an MBA HR, is an option

btw, i dint know u were an IT person. r u?

6

I’m not in I.T but I know what you guys do :-p

*i get a guilty feeling that i worked hard at that stuff for 4 yrs and im just wasting the knowledge n i might forget it...jus coz i think i don't enjoy it..? *
You don’t ‘think’ but you know you don’t enjoy it. Read your sentence again and be fair with yourself

maybe i am biased. i shud give it another chance. plus i shudnt be a slave to my laziness and i shudnt be taking the easier way out. a person can enjoy whatever they want to enjoy. its all abt attitude i think.
I disagree, you can’t force yourself to enjoy. If you are asked to play a musical instrument, no matter how many music courses you have taken..if you don’t feel comfortable sitting infornt the keyboard then you shouldn’t force the issue…
Channel your music knowledge into something related or different for that matter.

7

^^ I agree with Fayz... you can never "waste" Knowledge - in fact once you are at a level where you think you have knowledge (again not just information, but a level beyond that), you can utilize it in so many ways.

An example: As a management consultant, I realized that even in areas like marketing, I can come up with ideas that others have never seen before... and this is because I can devise creative quantitative solutions and combine that with qualitative aspects of decision making... so that comp sci background helps me in many ways.

Irem, I haven't been involved in any S/W Q/A as such, but have interacted with IS teams who do usability validation and function verification... you're right in that 80% of the time they'd use a RAD tool, but there is that 20% of the time when you need to create a "what if" scenario and test that yourself... for that you might need to write some code yourself, do sensitivity analysis by changing input parameters or runtime variables etc.

8

thanks guys

and thanks for the dilasay but been there done that and no matter what i try to tell myself, i do get the feeling i am wasting my coding skills [im not saying im the best coder or anything]

khayr, i’ll give it a try and see how it goes :slight_smile: thanks again for the repliez :k:

9

^

thanks for the reply ds :slight_smile:

hmmm…i guess a LOT depends on the product you are working on as well…i personally hold the view that there should be ppl in QA from all different backgrounds. there should be some hardcore programmers who can think what the meanest bugs would be and test the products against those. there should be some non techie ppl even who can just mimic the end user / client and test the product naively. sometimes in QA its better if you have no idea about the implementation side of the product at all and approach testing with a completely clean slate.

ideally though, there should be very tight QA at all levels of the product cycle, and developers should be careful about this. ideally there should be no separate QA dept coz only the developer is the perfect person to catch all the bugs. the very fact that QA is needed shows that the developers have been careless with their code. if i was to start my company i’d cut money from the developer’s salary everytime the QA ppl found a bug and give it to the QA person…:mean: coz why write buggy code in the first place…? as a programmer, buggy code in my books is just…a grave SIN…its DECEPTION…its unacceptable :stuck_out_tongue: but then there are some nondeliberate bugs which one could have overlooked…hmmm…the product specifications also need to be very very detailed. i sometimes think its the job of the product specification to cover the borderline cases and not the developer.

OK I’ll stop talking or I’ll never stop :smiley:

Junior Programmer > Senior Programmer > Team Lead > QA wala Banda > Proj Manager > Start own company.

:smiley: ahan… reminds me of the insects life cycle we used to study in school…larva, moth, butterfly wali :hehe:

10

Irem - remind me not to work for you when you start your own company :)

In a perfect world you will create wonderful complete set of requirements and specifications and then move on to design and architecture and then start coding off of these comprehensive artifacts... but that is not real life.. what you have in mind is what is known as the waterfall model.. it never works, even the person who came out with the water fall model stated in the very paper which described this model that this will not work... he had real life experience so he knew that it sounds good but in real life it will not work.... Iterative development is the way to go, there are different variations under iterative approach but that is a different discussion. IT managers/directors have to accept and plan for bugs… with new RAD tools and methodologies testing by developers has become more efficient and cost effective… but that is not QA work that is simply UNIT or Integration testing. May be to some level stress testing but there are other testing like user acceptance, smoke test, load test etc. that most of the developers are not trained or want to do… that is QA work….

I disagree that QA people have to have extensive programming background.. fixing bugs and programming tasks belong to programmers not QA. QA’s job is to make sure that the product is acceptable and can withstand the requirements as a whole in a real life scenario. QA is a very vast discipline in itself and up till now it has been very much under-appreciated in the IT world. One of the issues has been that there is not much research and resources invested in this area. But as the development costs have sky rocketed and majority of the IT projects found their way down the tube people are now realizing the benefit of investing in QA upfront to reap the benefits in the long run.

Of course QA team/need has to be customized based on the company, product, need, region, and many other factors. But one thing is for sure as the IT industry heads towards maturity QA will play a central role in all this and will be an integral part of the maturity.

11

oho chachoo bhai i was jokin :smiley: i am not that zaalim ya know :smiley:

p.s. thanks for the detailed reply :k:

12

^

interesting ds :D

13

Check this out:

“Researchers seek simpler software debugging”

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/07/27/debugging.ap/index.html

14

well irem da last job dat i was doin, ma responsibilitiez also included da QA of da project. this was quite a critical activity coz our projects were related wid financial institutionz and they have to be passed by internal/external/sytem auditorz, state bank n other standardz chkin bodiez etc.

2 tell u da truth irem it was a boring activity 4 m in da start, i even hated da idea itself dat sum 1 or khud m has 2 find bugs n errors in ma own code, cummon dat’s embarassin nayi, i suppose 2 b a cheetah programmer na, but afterwards i realised dat our quality trackin and assurance had saved us month’s efforts of resdeignin n rewriting da code if v wud hv done it da other way i.e dat’s widout QA.

Quality Control & Assurance is not sumfin like a part of SDLC or sum tool used in software engineering, it’s more of n umbrella like activity which coverz all da areaz from da product concept 2 it’s end (which actually neva comez in da real world) . Quality in urdu meanz Umdaagi so if u can understand da urdu version, u’ll exactly understand wat quality suppose 2 b

khayr 2 answer ur exact query da tasks i use 2 do included

  1. writing loads n loads of test casez n xecute em, da more different operational scenerioz u’ll devise in testin da least r da chancez of application crashing in live unlikely situationz. these test plans can be written against da already available documents like SRS’z ( da requirement, performance and design specifications) and can be confirmed by directly interacting wid da end userz

  2. then document and communicate da results of theze test casez includin da defects found + their resolution. It also hepled us 2 maintain a test library khudbakhud hi

  3. know ur end user’s requirement, da betta u know da betta u can use da knowledge in ur testing processes. sumtimes da end userz r unable 2 define their own requirements clearly n sumtimes they ask 4 moonz n starz in their handz. u hv 2 b able 2 filter wat’s genuine n wat’s not dat’s where ur personal n communication skillz cumz in.

  4. n then da technical part which u were missing comez; da tools dat v were usin were winrunner, loadrunner, ClearCase etc. these tools were just 2 automate da testin process.

  5. but in sum scenerioz v even had 2 write code snippets and scripts dat use 2 generate tons of data so dat performance of da application can b tested , s our application suppose 2 be runnin real-time, online in a distributed + centralized environment da testing had 2 b customized also.

khair tis is not da standard or industry definition of QA, it can include many more activitiez like coordinating wid da database n network ppl, making test planz, evaluate defect removal etc.

4 ur ez transition i can advise u 2 1st look in 2 da softwares ur company makes frm a layman point of view, 1st try 2 grasp da business processes runnin behind them, then start testing em out.

even in pk nowadays ppl r realising da importance of quality like da western world, n it’s a known fact only 25% of da software projects build in da world r able 2 deliver wat’s required frm em succesfully. da ads being listed in job listingz frm reknown software housez showz dat QA ppl definitely gotta brite future ahead.

ab ghalti say i got 2 a senior post so i dun hv 2 do all these tasks maself but i do make sure dat @least 1 Quality dept’s person is present in any kindda meeting/discussion being held 4 da projects

p.s Wish u best of luck 4 ur future endeavourz :k:

15

u made ma day ds :hula:
now find sum investorz 4 da company so dat i can move 2 da next stage :hoonh:

16

SS - wow yaar…thank u SOOO much..i know u r a buzy bandi..itna time nikaal k mere lyay itni lami aur detailed post likhnay ka boht boht shukriya :flower1: thanks :slight_smile:

ds, Chachoo bhai kewl linx, thanks :slight_smile:

17

I worked as a Software/QA Engineer while going to school and really loved it. My responsibility was to write scripts to populate databases and do some automated sanity and boundary level testing.