Bottleneck Confidence

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Have you ever wondered why we have QA? I know, that's a weird question. When we look at what QA does, we are really asking them to do something we haven't done for ourselves: we ask for their vote of confidence.

Consider the situation we put them in. We ask QA to review our application and tell us if there are any issues with it. We don't necessarily always tell them what we changed. If we tell them what we changed, hey don't always know how to test it properly, so instead, our founded confidence in them becomes, what I call, Bottleneck Confidence.

Bottleneck Confidence

Bottleneck Confidence is really just that, confidence that is restricted and not complete. This means that our confidence is throttled and limited to what we truly can achieve. So the question becomes: why do we need QA? Well, if we continue asking them to work in the same vein, then, we don't need QA. If we ask them to fill a different role, and allow us to reach our full potential, then they become vital to the needs of our work flow.

Area Consultants

When we consider using QA, they become a very interesting team mate. Imagine, a team member who has vast knowledge over the entire application and can be consulted on what can effect what when a change is made. Imagine a team member who can be consulted on how to effectively test an area of the application. Imagine a team member who can verify that what was asked by product has been properly implemented on e development side. Use your QA as an area a consultant.

Stop The Selenium Madness

Yes, I said it. The elephant in the room. Stop having your QA right seleniums. I challenge you. Developers should be writing a lot of effective unit tests. QA can help them understand if their tests test the appropriate logic. When we have effective unit tests, he Confidence we produce in the application increases ten fold, and the effectiveness of the team being able to release code more quickly goes up. If you have a slow development team, have them write tests. It will change your organization forever!

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