We do have a dedicated QA team and it's absolutely essential because developers (like me) aren't necessarily domain experts.
Does the QA team comprise domain experts? What is your domain?
Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
41–50 of 84 posts
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#42QA teams primary benefit shouldn't be running automated tests that the developers could do. It should be to do exploratory testing and trying to break things. There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released. If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivize…
> If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivized for finding the ways their code breaks.
It totally depends. In many cases it will come back to the original developer if their code breaks in production. That is a lot of incentive to test as thoroughly as possible before releasing.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#43QA teams primary benefit shouldn't be running automated tests that the developers could do. It should be to do exploratory testing and trying to break things. There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released. If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivize…
Beautifully articulated. This is exactly what’s going on. Incentives are simply misaligned with expectations. In all likelihood, the market doesn’t reward quality software as much as it rewards robust feature sets.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#44QA teams primary benefit shouldn't be running automated tests that the developers could do. It should be to do exploratory testing and trying to break things. There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released. If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivize…
Another solution is to incentivise the developers by lowering the barrier between them and their users, and changing the success measures from outputs to outcomes.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#45Yes. They test by considering the app as a black box. They understand business.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#46The biggest benefits a QA team can give is unit/e2e tests code reviews and consult product managers. The worst value they can provide with manuell testing (exc pt exploratory testing)
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#47QA Engineer here. We don't have a centralized QA department, but we do have a dedicated engineer who is responsible for QA that is integrated within the development team. Before I joined my team, it didn't have a dedicated QA member. The quality of the software was fine, but there were other compromises. The team didn't have a good test strategy - every developer made adhoc decisions on how their code was tested. Our…
I really like this approach. An engineer who's responsiblity and focus is QA.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#48My customers are the best QA team :)
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#49QA teams primary benefit shouldn't be running automated tests that the developers could do. It should be to do exploratory testing and trying to break things. There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released. If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivize…
> There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released.
The mutual respect aspect is key. If the dynamic isn't right, people end up feeling attacked and it can create a contentious environment. Same goes for code review work.
Re: Ask HN: Do you have a dedicated QA team?
#50QA teams primary benefit shouldn't be running automated tests that the developers could do. It should be to do exploratory testing and trying to break things. There should be a adversarial, yet respectful, relationship between dev and QA where dev tries to get their software released and QA is finding reasons why it shouldn't be released. If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivize…
> If there's only developers who test their own code then they're not incentivized for finding the ways their code breaks. It totally depends. In many cases it will come back to the original developer if their code breaks in production. That is a lot of incentive to test as thoroughly as possible before releasing.
Only insofar as ensuring that the software doesn't crash in production, or otherwise cause an event that would cause on-call to be paged. If the customer has a bug, and an issue is opened in the bug tracker, what does the developer care? Forty hours a week is forty hours a week. The developer isn't responsible for delivering business features on-time, and middle management can't be held responsible for delays that are "inevitable" and "outside their control".