Behind the scenes: QA Part One

As part of a series of posts going behind the scenes here at Realmac HQ, I’m going to be introducing a topic that’s often seen as the black box of software development, QA.

I’ll be featuring more specific aspects of my role in a mini-series of QA related posts while this article will give you a little introduction to my overall role, I hope!

As Quality Assurance manager, I’m responsible for overseeing all things quality related; that means both Quality Assurance and Quality Control. As the line between these two areas can be blurry at the best of times, we often use the term ‘QA’ to loosely encompass both roles. That makes QA a a pretty wide ranging subject that would be challenging to detail what my role covers, if asked to, in a single sentence.

Some of the key areas that I’m involved in day-to-day include writing test and support documentation, issue tracking and, of course, testing all of our apps to ensure they are reliable. One of my overall aims is to ensure the apps we ship are not only bug free and a joy to use, but also that the means by which we build them are the best they can possibly be. I love asking questions as to why things are the way they are. Asking questions is a great way to begin improving something. Why is it that some parts of an app’s development cycle take longer than others’ Why is it that one framework or API is particularly error-prone compared to another. If there’s no justifiable reason for something, should it be there in the first place’

Although QA covers the entire development cycle, I personally am not always directly involved at the beginning of an app’s development cycle. For instance, low-level code testing is handled by the project engineers, who independently peer review the code. The analysis of such tests are available to be fully explained and justified to the non-engineering team members. I tend to be more heavily involved once a general feature-set has been settled and when early prototypes become slightly more stable internal releases. At this point I set about forming more detailed test documentation in preparation for more user-based testing.

From the outside, documentation and testing may sound like fairly dry subjects but I like to think a sense of humour plays an important part in good testing. I take great pleasure in throwing the documented processes to the side to deliberately create scenarios that may throw up unexpected behaviours and edge cases in an app. This is an area where human ingenuity can truly trump more rigid automated testing!

When it comes to creating test plans and manifests, I treat each project independently and don’t force them to conform to any processes used in another. However, one useful set of guidelines that I highly suggest you look to base any potential support or issue ticketing process on are Apple’s Bug Reporting Best Practices. The more relevant and detailed information you can provide in a ticket, the more likely an engineer will be able to diagnose and resolve an issue or accurately implement a feature request.

A commonly used word at Realmac HQ is “detail”. We pride ourselves on getting the smallest details right in everything we do from handling errors at code level to designing for retina user interfaces. It’s important to point out that detail doesn’t need to be associated purely with visuals - as QA Manager, I like to think that the details are the individual steps taken to build and ship an app that will delight our users.

Apple released a recruitment video last year that got a lot of coverage online. The video is littered with statements that ring true to anyone who strives to achieve process perfection. The overriding tone of the video was that the focus was not solely on the quality of the end product but really about having the right processes and people in place to enable them to go on and create the best products.

Infinite Potential

The poster above hangs on the wall across from my desk. It reads: “The infinite potential of every little bit”. To cut a potentially long story short, if someone ever was to ask me to encapsulate the mindset and reasoning behind QA at Realmac in a single sentence, I’d point them to this poster.

If there happens to be a topic mentioned here that you’d like expanded upon in my next post, please feel free to comment below or reach me @hamishmcneill on Twitter with any questions.