How I Fell in Love with the QA
Before entering the world of programming, I wanted to become an Android developer. A year after, I’m a full time QA engineer, and a happy one. How did it happen?
It all started with my job application at the design&dev agency COBE. At that moment, I haven’t had any ideas about QA but my future boss asked me if I would like to try it out, as he finds QA the best way to start discovering Android functions and learn basic terminology.
First few weeks were all about reading and learning about platforms and company processes. Much of this reading was about the QA and its importance. Honestly, I thought that those were all just ‘empty’ words.
Later on, I’ve started testing manually, but whenever I had some free time, I used it to learn Java. My only goal was to learn Java as soon as possible and finally start with the ‘real’ programming.
The bug that changed it all
Then it happened. My first bug! When I found it, it was the first time that I felt like I’m contributing to the team — and it felt awesome. After a few days of testing I realized that manual testing is not all there is. There is a huge world of possibilities how to test and what to test.
That was a moment when I started to like what I do.
I realized that my job is actually really fun. You are the first person who gets to play with an app. You have complete freedom to do whatever you want in order to find bugs. Your job is to be creative and to predict what users will do when they are using your app.
I was told that dev team is glass which stands on the table. I’m the wind who is trying to knock that glass down.
Finding bugs became a game
What I enjoy the most in my job is the opportunity to communicate with the team. Together we are trying to find the best way to resolve whatever problem occurs. When it happens, we are working as one to fix it, and not as rivals, as it often happens. In COBE we support each other so when I report a bug, I’ll get a compliment, not a complaint. For me, this is the most important thing to achieve as a QA.
It seems that importance of a QA is quite big after all
Testing provides some dose of security to the whole team. Even if you have tested everything, you can never tell if an app is 100% bugs free, but you know that you’ve done everything that is in your power to deliver the most reliable version of it.
But the main goal is not really delivering an 100% bugs free app because most likely that kind of app wouldn’t be intuitive enough for users to like it. You are doing testing to ensure quality of your products and to be sure that you don’t have any omissions. We are all humans and it’s normal that we will make mistakes.
Importance and influence of technology today shouldn’t even be explained. Products such as airplane software or software in medical equipment are often in charge of human lives. It would be reckless not to test them, right?
But when it comes to other products like apps or websites, we often hear that there is no time or that this product is not of the same importance. But let’s say you want to buy a new car. I’m sure you wouldn’t buy it before you took it out for a test drive. You’ll first want to see if everything is okay with that car, are the brakes correct, do you have servo wheel, are tires faded… Why would it be different with apps?
Maybe you are not saving anyone’s life with it, but you definitely want to create smooth and enjoyable product that your users will love and come back to. If you approach every project like it’s the most important in the world, the quality of it will be unquestionable.
And you will feel much better about it, knowing that you are the one responsible for the seamless and awesome user experience. Also, it helps when you push the app and go for a beer with your colleagues, to celebrate and not worry! :)
Overcoming challenges
Of course, its not all fun and games. Every start is difficult and in my QA beginnings I’ve faced some obstacles too. It is important to imagine those obstacles as a challenge and understand that there is an existing solution for every problem — you just have to find it. The biggest race every QA has to run is against the lack of knowledge. As a QA, you have to be a t-shaped person. That means that you have to be good in your work, but you have to know a little bit of everything from other areas too. For example, great testers know how different mobile platforms react, understand frontend/backend concepts and recognize good and bad practices in design.
This versatility is exactly what I like about this job. There is always a new problem that you will encounter, new tool to test with. Sometimes it takes a lot of time but the feeling of finding a solution and seeing the progress every day is quite addictive!
Nikolina is a master of math and a QA engineer at COBE. While her responsibilities mostly focus on QA, she is strongly influencing and challenging the whole team, changing our process from the scratch. As a former basketball player, she shows impeccable work habits and contagious energy that often reflects on the team. In her free time, she is trying out different sports (currently yoga), plays DnD and enjoys life in general.
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