Four Quality Engineering Best Practices

The 35th Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference was recently held in Portland, Oregon. The Portland World Trade Center was packed with quality testers, engineers, developers, and managers from different backgrounds and experiences. In the crowd were highly talented speakers and workshop leaders covering topics such as testing, data, development, management and security.

There I was able to take part in some very fascinating and informative lectures. Some of my favorites were related to general quality engineering services practices, automation, and accessibility. The following are four points that were highlighted during the meeting.

1. Quality belongs to everyone

Today everything from television to emergency medical services depends on some type of software. TV system failures seem to be less of a concern, but emergency service failures can be life threatening.

With society becoming more dependent on software, software quality becomes more and more important.

Penny Allen, director of corporate QA at REI, argues that traditional accountability for quality resides solely with quality assurance. However, when the process is owned by the entire project team, the process works better. Do.

This applies to developers specifically, but project managers, technical directors, designers, and strategists (as you all know!).

2. Study telemetry using indicators

Indicators tell us if something is working.

Product telemetry takes information that is already in the system and uses it to do something. This is a constant stream of data sent by the product that allows the team to see what the customer is doing.

An example that will help you understand the difference between metrics and telemetry is using a car. The metric provides information about the actual weekly mileage of the vehicle and compares it with the ideal mileage specified by the manufacturer.

Product telemetry also uses this to let drivers know how often they use their cars, how long they use them, and what features they use in addition to their weekly mileage.

While there are drawbacks to using telemetry (which can be slow and costly to store), there is valuable knowledge you can benefit from.

Telemetry can tell you in minutes or days that it typically takes weeks to detect bug reports and crashes.For companies hesitant to invest, keep in mind that Wayne Roseberry, Microsoft's leading software developer, may be using it by competitors. In this case, they know the user information long before those who don't use it, so the company is slowing down customization at great disadvantage.

3. Prioritize accessibility

Accessibility means making information available to people who for various reasons may not have access to it. Michael Larson, Senior Quality Assurance Engineer at SocialText in developing accessible software.

4. The tool cannot make a decision

You can use programs and tools to make your tests more efficient, but you need to understand that you cannot make decisions.

This is important when you are automating tests or using tests to see if you can access the software.

Instead of using tools to determine the suitability of the right experience, you can use tools to determine if something meets your needs, to determine if something is there, and to confirm a status.

This way you can maximize the effectiveness of your tool without compromising product quality.