Quality Assistance

Recently there were a couple of blog posts by Atlassian testers.  The first article I read was called “Inside Atlassian - Introducing  Atlassian QA” , which was developed by Andrew Prentice.  The second article was titled “The Jira QA Process”, which was written by Penny Wyatt.

Both are well-crafted articles and I believe they did the job of causing me to think.

First I would like to explore a statement was made by Andrew.  He said, “To be fair, a large number of people claiming to be professional testers can’t test either.”  I cannot say I disagree with the statement, but I ponder how do you determine if someone can test or not.  I would suggest that it is through demonstration of skill and others having the trust in that skill.

In Penny’s article she explains, “During this process, a QA engineer has multiple points at which he or she provides input into the way the story is developed and tested – providing every form of quality improvement except actually testing the story themselves.”  This thought seems to slightly contradict Andrew’s position by stating their testers do not even test.  I agree with her premise that they are involved in the entire process injecting quality into every story.  Where I disagree is the testers not actually testing.   I certainly may be missing something, but I have found that through the active act of testing a vast amount of knowledge is gained.  Typically great testing leads to more great testing.  Perhaps Penny was only referencing testing at the story level.

I agree that everyone should own quality.  I agree that experienced testers should assist in the education of others.  I do not like the term Quality Assurance.  But I think great testers should always test.

I am leaning toward using the term Quality Engineering, but I know that will be controversial so I had better prepare.