And again about software testing

There are three pillars on which quality is based in every well performant company: People  with right skills and attitude to do the work, Technology  to help people to do their work even better, Culture  with opened environment for growing new specialists and new tools on the way to success. Have I missed anything?

In many companies work of QA organisation (QA/Test engineers or/and teams) is something hidden in darkness. Nobody knows what they are doing and accordingly do not feel all the efforts QA engineers spend for assuring high quality of delivered products. In order to improve the situation QA organisation should improve visibility of their work. I recommend to look at the following list of ares where visualisation and transparency is needed: Transparency of communication Channels Emails Messangers Who? When? What? How? Availability and accessibility of all required artefacts Test Strategy Test Plans Test cases / Checklists / Test Flows Roadmap Reports and etc. Transparency of decisions Decision making process Decision making group(s) Chapters Guilds Library of documented decisions Publishing decisions via all available channels Current state of ongoing work What is done What is in progress What is planned next according to the roadmap Feedback loop Feedback about quality from stakeholders

Many people, especially in flat structured organisations, say that they don’t need managers. Right, but from my point of view it’s getting possible only if everyone in the organisation is on the same page, can easily and openly communicate to each other, knows where their product is growing, everyone is highly motivated and nobody has high career ambitions. The best example of flat structured organisation is a startup working in a small garage. Definitely they don’t need managers, they know what they are building, they can communicate to each other and they define their business strategy. Problems come with growing of the product where one day they will have to start hiring new people. Staying flat structured means working hard together and make decisions together, not only technical decisions but strategic and managerial as well. More your company grow, more difficult it is to keep flat structure working well, more time it requires to convince others in chosen directions and business