Quality Analysts (QAs) are not there to assure quality. They are there to analyse quality and quality practices and advise on approaches to system quality. They are particularly good at helping mitigate quality risks because of their trained ability to question what seems to be there. They are neither the gatekeepers of the releases, nor meant to be the bottlenecks for testing, nor the owners of quality. We always need testing and feedback, but do we always need testers? Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t. This talk is knowing when one is relevant and then knowing HOW to be relevant. This includes looking after your career as QA and staying ahead of the curve and remaining employable.

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How to remain relevant as QA
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How to remain relevant as QA
Survival of the Species
Requires Evolution and Adaptation
Theresa Neate @ TConf 2018
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Theresa Neate
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“Do we still need testers?”
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Ignorant questions stem from...
... ignorance!
(not malice)
- hearsay reports
- misunderstanding Lean
- idealism
- hopes of cutting costs
- misunderstanding the changing
world of testing
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Testing IS changing
(and always will)
To survive in
tech (and
testing),
one needs to
continuously
evolve
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Evolution of test strategy
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Test Types
Over
Test Phases
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Continuous Testing
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Evolution of testing
attitude
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Less of this
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And more of this
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Evolution of testing
skill:
TESTING and CHECKING
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Testing vs Checking
Checking is the process
of confirmation,
verification, and
validation.
checking: confirmation,
machine decidable,
automation
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Testing vs Checking
Testing is the process of
evaluating a product and
finding new information.
It involves exploration,
discovery, investigation
and learning.
testing: exploration &
learning, requires sapience
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Your job is not
‘finding bugs’ or
‘breaking things’
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Learning the skill of feedback
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Bad vs Good Feedback
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Bad Feedback :
Adversarial
Opinion
Bias
Emotion
Blunt
Blame
Good Feedback :
Considerate
Helpful
Impartial
Factual (verify it)
Descriptive
Ownership

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Feedback Exercise
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I don’t want the API to take
2 seconds to come back with
a response. Urggh.
The API took 2.3 seconds to
return with a response. It’s
an increase on the 1 second
from last week. This
increases the overall page
load to 9 seconds.

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Evolving into both a
specialist AND a
generalist
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T-shaped roles
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T-shaped testers
Dev / Architect / BA / UX /
SecOps
Criticalthinking
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So - DO we still need testers?
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When DON’T you need (more) testers?
“We have lots of bugs”
“We have UIs to test”
“Someone needs to do cross-browser testing”
“We have a lot of manual regression testing to
do”
“We don’t like testing”
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When DO we need testers, then?
“There are significant integration points”
“This is an absolute deal-breaker for our
business”
“We don’t know this product well enough”
“We have a team new to this way of working”
(examples)
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Closing
• Know what is valuable and helpful.
• Continuously evolve to add value.
• Make your value known (less ignorance).
• Stay sharp. Learn & adapt.
• Avoid continuous complacency & comfort
zones.
• Evolving is up to you.
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Thank you!
(Reading list next page)
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Reading
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28608015/
continuous-integration-vs-continuous-delivery
-vs-continuous-deployment
https://medium.com/@jchyip/why-t-shaped-peopl
e-e8706198e437
https://www.ted.com/talks/mel_robbins_how_to_
stop_screwing_yourself_over
The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work,
and Confidence with Everyday Courage, Mel
Robbins
http://personalkanban.com/pk/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140411172902
-46939713-the-hard-truth-about-software-testi
ng/
http://www.deltamatrix.com/horizontal-and-ver
tical-user-stories-slicing-the-cake/
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https://www.techtarget.com/contributor/The
resa-Neate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGT03Yjy1n
4
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/continuous-
testing-devops-dan-ashby/
http://rea.tech/do-we-need-qas-testers/
http://rea.tech/lean-qa-aka-qa-ops/
http://www.qarevolution.com/software-testi
ng-evolution/
http://www.testingeducation.org/BBST/bugad
vocacy/
http://www.kaner.com/pdfs/bugadvoc.pdf