There’s a simple universal rule, “You want to grow? You’ve to change!” and the one who is not growing seems to be nonliving. Some even go so far as to say “To be still is to die – The only difference between alive and dead is that of movement”. To quote a saying in the east – “Blessing is in Striving”. This popular phrase is important to understand for you as a business owner because it entails the concept of continuous efforts or continuous improvement. A room for continuous improvement is always there for businesses, as the Japanese call it “KAIZEN”. This approach is followed by only those organizations that want to grow. And by growing, KAIZEN means to strive continuously for the betterment of business processes.
Now here’s one question for you. Can you relate the exact scenario in the case of a business, especially the most challenging one, i.e software development?
When it comes to Software development, although it is not as easy as we sometimes think. This is a process full of ups and downs. But the most crucial stage of a software development life-cycle is the quality assurance process. To assure that your product’s quality is meeting the user’s expectations, continuous improvement in the quality assurance process is mandatory at your end. Therefore, before you get your hands and minds involved in the development of a product, follow the “continuous improvement” approach from the early stages i.e. change the way your Quality assurance team is involved in the overall software development process. Because when it comes to software product development, QA is considered to be the backbone of a firm. You must enable your QA team to create high-quality products and consistently innovate business-critical processes.
Here are a few ways to nurture your QA team;
Constructive Feedback and assistance – One best thing you can do for your testers to empower them is by providing them constructive feedback about the unique and creative ideas they come up with while assisting them whenever they encounter any problem. This way quality assurance professionals would feel as if they’re actively being engaged in the process and management is interacting directly with them that would strengthen an employee and management connection.
It is a great way to nurture your employees for your benefit and employees’ professional growth by providing them reviews and guidelines whenever you feel they lack something. Moreover, daily face-to-face meetings must be conducted that just do not have an agenda to pass orders instead managers and team leads must listen to their Q/A team members’ ideas. In short, freedom of speech must be given to the staff for better overall software testing and its results.
Incorporate the use of special tools – If you want your software testers to work more productively and to come up with minimum bug leakage while ensuring maximum product quality, you must have to change the traditional methods of performing testing. Embrace the advancements that technology has provided to you in this modern age. Using old and lengthy ways of conducting tests, detecting bugs, managing test cases would not only make your organization unproductive but also your QA team members as well. Testers would get bored and frustrated and would not get the use of their true potential while an increase in turnover rate might be a possibility as well.
The market is offering special QA Testing tools from a scale of best to least effective for software development companies. Now it depends upon organizations how they implement the use of a tool that best aligns the project requirements while easing the life of software testers. The use of tools would save a lot of tester’s time and they will be able to focus on the more valuable tasks and procedures. QA teams spend a lot of their time on reporting and document managing while they should be focussing more on creative ways to find user scenarios and eliminating bugs with capable tools at their disposal, they can directly contribute to the test-suite and improve the overall evaluation capabilities.
Say No To “Software Testers as Donkeys” – In most of the areas of the world we use donkeys as synonymous to carry heavy loads. Similarly, in many organizations, management often starts considering software testers as if they are donkeys just hired to check the heavy and repetitive workloads of the organizations while expecting them to be productive in their tasks as well. One easy way to mitigate this and empower your QA team is to space out initiatives in a reasonable timeline. This will take off a lot of the pressure and ensure that the product lives up to stakeholder and user expectations.
Quarterly Training Must Be Provided – Every single day our eyes come across articles and blogs being written about various advancements in the technological sector. Try to make it a part of your employee engagement policy to conduct quarterly training, covering essential topics, technical skills, and knowledge via inviting different tech experts to empower your quality assurance team that their employer is concerned about their career growth. This way employees will feel empowered and they will use their full potential to achieve the overall organizational software product quality assurance goals.
Summarizing it all
Although you might not need a change in your internal organizational behavior yet you may want it. There’s a little but significant difference between a need and want. If you make special efforts to empower your employees, remember that you’re indirectly making efforts for your organizational benefit. And in the case of the software development domain, it is all the more important, because your backbone must be strong to pull the weight of your organization.
