What QA expects from Dev

Continuing with my previous post about what developers expect from you as a QA, I'm going to tell you the other side of the coin, this is what I expect from the development team or from each developer on the company or project.

Developers must do the heavy work of the project, they need to build up stuff for the client and create things, they need to make what the client wants in requirements into a real thing that the client can use, that being said, QA expects from the development team to deliver with the highest quality possible, what I expect from dev is not just to pass the requirement to QA, but to read the requirement, test the requirement (unit testing is mandatory), and at least make sure the acceptance criteria or the happy path is met before passing the story to QA, this will avoid stories to be taken back to dev, reopen stories or log a lot of bugs that could have been avoided and fixed by the development team before QA, just by doing a quick check before passing the story to QA. This also applies to bugs logged by QA, the developer should test the bug and make sure that the fix doesn't affect any other areas on the system, in terms of cross browsing bugs or mobile bugs, developers should not rely on simulators or plugins they should test their fixes on real devices, I know there are a lot of tools to simulate browsers and mobile devices but it has happen to me in the past that a simulator is showing a different thing than the real device or browser.

Along with the previous paragraph, I expect from the developers to challenge themselves, while the project advances the developer should too, developers should continue learning stuff during the project and they should be willing to improve their skills and quality, with every delivery there should be less and less bugs, that shows the developers grew in knowledge and in the project and that the quality of what the client expects will be higher, don't just do what you're asked to do, go beyond.

If the development team expects from QA great communication, QA expects from dev the same thing, I really expect from a developer to communicate risks, challenges, fixes, improvements, and the work done. Of course, good attitude and excellent communication with the PO and QA. If there are doubts, a developer should not wait for QA to resolve the doubts, they should be proactive and ask the PO or BA before implementing something. This communication I'm talking about is not only verbal but written too, so with that comes the correct status of the tickets on the tool you are using (Jira, kanban board, etc), developers should update tickets with the correct status and not wait for the QA to do that, this gives correct visibility not only to the team but to the client.

Finally, I also expect from a developer to work hand in hand with the QA, not to see QA as an isolated thing at the end of the development life cycle and that his/her only job is to log bugs, but to see the QA as a member of the development team, a person who can collaborate if that's the case with best practices and processes and of course great testing skills and a person that is there to help out, not only to log bugs or to point out a developers failure. Another thing I expect from the development team is to collaborate with load testing, security testing and of course automation testing, either do it if the QA doesn't have all the skills, or just help out the QA team on coding standards and guidelines (talking about automation), like adding IDs to elements in the page like fields, buttons, etc and help out if the QA has doubts. QA and dev are not enemies and that's a myth that must be forgotten and buried, they both should be partners that walk side by side towards a common goal and that goal is to deliver stuff with the highest quality possible in the planned time to the client and with this the client will be happy.

There will be no blog post on the following two weeks, I'll come back next December 5th with a new post, stay tuned!

@LuchoAgileQA