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in the classic model, most QA orgs were a useless appendage. partially by construction, but largely because QA gets squeezed out when dev is late (when does tha
by convolvatron 3y ago
in the classic model, most QA orgs were a useless appendage. partially by construction, but largely because QA gets squeezed out when dev is late (when does that happen?). they aren't folded in early, so they twiddle their thumbs doing 'test infrastructure' and 'test plans', until they finally get a code drop and a 48 hr schedule to sign off, which they are under extreme pressure to do.
but every once and a while you ran across a QA organization that actually had a deep understanding of the problem domain, and actually helped drive development. right there alongside dev the entire way. not only did they improve quality, but they actually saved everyone time.
- lambic 3y agoNot sure why this was downvoted, that second paragraph is right on the money.
- cratermoon 3y agoSaying "useless appendage" sounds to me like it's the QA team that's the problem, when what you're really saying is that it's the organization and process that pushed QA teams into irrelevance. I agree with your assessment overall, and those issues were one of the driving forces behind companies dispensing with QA and putting it all on the developers.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoI worked on a team where we structured things so we had working groups of 2-3 devs + 1 QA engineer for individual features, which were typically less than a week. Idea being the QA person was involved in the writing of the acceptance criterion and the testing at the end, etc, but also along-the-way testing. It worked exceptionally well, in my opinion but the QA revolted; they didn't like it, said that it felt like we were trying to make them into software developers. And so it ended, and it was back to "throw it over the wall".