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When testers and developers cooperate, do consultation and coordinate on a specific project, the result is beyond expectations. With this kind of interaction, developers can meet their expected deadlines, testers can release mostly error-free functionalities, and customers can experience a quality product.
Still, bringing QA (quality assurance) and development teams together is a challenge since both the teams face mounting pressures and they have to meet their deadlines.
Following are some of the suggestions that can help curtail differences and optimize productivity:
Encourage a collaborative team approach
Everybody has a specific role to play in a team and independent performance is not possible. Therefore, the “We are a Team” method is a must to encourage communication between development and QA from day one of the projects and it helps set misunderstandings aside and develop clarity. On most occasions, development and QA teams are busy blaming one another. Both teams need to understand that the emphasis is on making a better product. Only then can these problems be resolved.
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Respect and understand QA and development teams’ roles
The development and QA teams should know that they are very interdependent, even if their work profiles may differ.
Paul Graham states that most developers demand “maker time” in which they concentrate on an intricate job of developing software as per client stipulations. the most annoying thing would be disturbing them with bug reports while they are at work. Issue tracking tools can give testers a reporting platform for the bug to keep things in control.
The development team should understand that it should keep aside some time to slog on bugs. While the QA team must understand that not all bug reports may receive a satisfactory response.
Prioritizing the project from the customer’s point of view
The developer should understand how each feature will help the customer and what it stands for when building software. On the other hand, a quality assurance analyst should understand the customers’ expectations from the specific developments in the technology h project and the result. The reality is that customer expectations have skyrocketed with recent developments in technology. Be it in terms of products, services, or customer service of a product. For instance, customers now expect a software or an application to be intuitive, seamless and replicate how they usually work in the physical world.
Thus, with a customer-centric method for your software development, you can increase customer satisfaction and usability.
Encourage interactions between developers and QA analysts
Lack of communication and misunderstandings are your biggest enemies keeping you from effective collaboration and teamwork. Developers and QA analysts should have their seats closer to each other and interact regularly. Without knowing each other, how can things be resolved? Help a solid communication among the groups at every phase of the particular project through established issue tracking tools or other collaborative platforms.
Conclusion
By enabling QA testers and developers to work together, many organizations can deliver high-quality products in less time. This is because they avoid the staggered approach of split iterations that force both QA and developers to constantly switch context and revisit old work. Real-time collaboration tools have a huge part to play here as they allow testers and developers to effectively communicate with one another and leave little room for misunderstandings.
Organizations can benefit by directly applying the highlighted points in this article to get their teams working together rather than operating as two separate teams with different goals. It is an uphill challenge that is worth it if your organization truly wants to get benefitted from an agile process.
