quality assurance

Articles

Exploratory Testing: Why Is It Not Ideal for Agile Projects? Exploratory Testing: Why Is It Not Ideal for Agile Projects?

As the Agile environment has efficient principles that allow quick responses to changes and the ability to deal with uncertainty, exploratory testing may seem like a perfect match for such projects. However, this is only partially true. In reality, diverse reasons impede its usage in Agile projects, and companies should take them into account before designing QA strategies.

Vitaly  Prus's picture Vitaly Prus
Uplifting QA Teams Through Metrics Uplifting QA Teams Through Metrics

As software products and services are becoming more complex, it requires more comprehensive testing for identifying the defects and pursuing the necessary fixes before it becomes available for public release. The QA process needs to be planned out and monitored so that it can be successful. The most effective way to track the efficacy of QA activities is to use well-thought-through metrics.

Dilruba Malik's picture Dilruba Malik
Building the Right Culture Within Your SQA Team

The concept for development teams in a scrum environment is to be self-organizing, basically managing themselves and holding each other accountable. This poses the question: What do QA managers do with their time? For me, it’s always been about building the right culture—respecting those under you just as much as you respect those above you. It is about finding a way to manage your team without being directly involved with them.

Daniel Garay's picture Daniel Garay
Community Plans for Developing an Organizational Software Testing Community

When author Zane Roett began a new Senior Manager test role in a new organization in 2019, he found that it became an important task to create and lead the development of a software test engineering professional community of practice (TCoP).

Zane Roett's picture Zane Roett

Better Software Magazine Articles

QA Is More Than Being a Tester QA Is More Than Being a Tester

QA testers often take on more of a role than just testing software code. When the team needs help, QA should lend a hand in assisting with business analysis, customer communication, user experience, and user advocacy.

Amanda Perkins's picture Amanda Perkins
Achieving Continuous Improvement and Innovation in Software

There is tremendous pressure on software development teams to deliver software faster, better, and cheaper. Quality engineering with a focus on innovation is the answer

Michael Sowers's picture Michael Sowers
veggies and gems Alternate Testing Models: A Tale of Veggies and Precious Gems

As if working at Lego isn’t fun enough, Sherri Sobanski delights in finding new ways to test. Faced with a situation requiring a complete product redesign, she shares the route her team took to overhaul testing.

Sherri Sobanski's picture Sherri Sobanski
Quality Assurance Is a Process, Not a Department

QA is often considered that lonely department of testers whose job is to find defects before the customer does. It's not always glamorous, but QA deserves to be recognized as a key cog in the testing  machine. To achieve business goals, it is Susan Bradley's view that the QA process needs to be embraced throughout the entire software development lifecycle.

Susan Bradley's picture Susan Bradley

Interviews

Melissa Benua Whole Team Quality: A Conversation with Melissa Benua
Video

Melissa Benua, director of engineering at mParticle, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about the importance of whole team quality, how to get started using the test pyramid, and how developers can start writing testable code.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Dan McFall Sponsored Interview: DevOps Trends in Enterprise Mobility
Video

Dan McFall, president and CEO at Mobile Labs, chats with TechWell community manager Owen Gotimer about trends in enterprise mobility, the role DevOps and the cloud play in mobile application testing, and the transition to working from home.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer
Davar Ardalan From NPR to AI: An Interview with Davar Ardalan

Davar Ardalan, founder and storyteller-in-chief of IVOW, talks about how her experience working at NPR helped her launch an AI and storytelling startup. She also discusses how testers, QA analysts, and software engineers are on the front lines of working with users and understanding user engagement, and she explains the importance of finding ways to collaborate with them.

Jennifer Bonine's picture Jennifer Bonine
Greg Paskal Data Visualization in Test Automation: A Conversation with Greg Paskal
Video

Greg Paskal, test automation lead at Ramsey Solutions, talks about data lakes and how to effectively use data visualization. Done well, data visualization should help practitioners, managers, and stakeholders easily consume, understand, and act on the information the visual displays.

Owen Gotimer's picture Owen Gotimer

Conference Presentations

STARCANADA 2019 Taming Your Dragon: From No QA to Fully Integrated QA
Slideshow

Many companies struggle with their QA processes and think of them as bottlenecks to their releases. Join Priyanka on her journey of transforming QA and improving its reputation and reliability.

Priyanka Halder
STARCANADA 2019 3 Steps to QA Success from a VP of Quality Assurance
Slideshow

Are you a leader with a quality problem? Every organization struggles with quality at some point in their product lifecycle. Knowing what to measure and how to build a culture of quality with specific and actionable methods is key.

Karen Holliday
STARCANADA 2019 Enabling Enterprise Quality
Slideshow

Too often quality is identified as solely owned by the quality assurance team. By taking a broader approach to roles, tools, and ideology, you can restructure your vision of how to provide rapid, frequent releases that empower all delivery team members.

Mike Cullen
Scaling Quality through Community Leadership
Slideshow

Modern software development organizations often build teams around features. Unfortunately, these teams tend to become siloed, building tools and processes without being aware of how other teams have solved the same problems.

Philip Daye

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