How to communicate with dev team as a QA engineer

Within the product development cycle, every team plays a key role. The development team is responsible for delivering the code, and the QA team focuses on maintaining the product quality. Both teams have specific goals with different priorities. While the goal of developers and QA engineers is an issue-free product launch, their positions can result in differences.

As a QA engineer, you must understand how to convey your message across teams to avoid conflicts and disagreements.

The following strategies can work to improve communication with development teams.

1. Avoid conflict at all costs

Developers and testers are part of the same ecosystem. But unintentionally, while giving their best towards project success, both teams can be oblivious of others’ contributions. Undoubtedly, developers put their best to create functional software; bugs and errors still occur.

As a QA engineer, you should make it a point to bring humility in your communication. If a bug you report is taken as an ignorant, trivial, or malicious idea by the developer, you need to understand it’s strictly a personal opinion. Learn how to communicate elegantly without being dismissive of developers’ feedback. If they reject a bug you reported, follow up politely to understand their perspective.

2. Provide constructive feedback on defects 

Reporting errors and shortcomings are part of the job of QA testers. It is essential to consider a constructive way to convey the defects rather than sharing destructive feedback. You need to develop productive communication skills.

One of the easiest ways to keep feedback vivacious is to avoid dark, judgmental, accusatory, subjective tones. You can accelerate communication with the development team by offering valuable feedback.

Whenever you provide feedback, make sure it is:

• Issue-focused
• Specific
• Tactful
• Action-oriented

Avoid including any statement outside the scope of these four criteria.

3. Provide visibility into your activities

Visibility improves collaboration and builds trust among teams. Developers and testers are no exception.

Do not just assume that the development team, clients, or any other entity know what you’re up to or what testing procedures and standards you are using. For smooth communication, review what features, modules, or functionality you’re planning to test with the development team or the developer.

Transparency is one of the essential communication skills that help build most collaborative teams. When you share your approach with developers, they can better troubleshoot the problems faster. You can widen the scope of testing by organizing bug-hunt days with members of the product management, design, support, and architect teams. With more eyes scrutinizing the product, the quality improves. Last, you can publish the takeaways you learned after discussion with clients to help developers understand the product’s end goals.

4. Be realistic without fail

Testing is only a means to an end, so don’t be unrealistic with the quality requirements of a product. Your goal as a QA engineer is to maintain product quality without impeding production.

Instead of creating endless test cases, focus on what is essential for the customers. Based on that requirement, build test cases. More often than not, the user story definition has redundant requirements. You should anticipate the critical user requirements and perform a test based on that.

For instance, the software might pass all functional tests and look great but still be hard for customers to use. You represent the end-user and share your understanding with developers to create products that deliver the best user experience.

5. Understand it’s human to make mistakes

Have you found a critical error? Where do you go from here?

Avoid being sarcastic or belittling. QA Testing exists because bugs occur during software development. Just as testers, developers work under deadlines and budget constraints. It is plausible for them to mess up at times; it’s only human.

Don’t be dismissive of the efforts of the development team. Your role as a QA engineer is to assist in rectifying the issues. Also, if you find a feature to be low quality, do not threaten to disapprove. By not approving a part, you alienate the developer and make the product deficient. There are several steps you can take to fix low quality.

You can constitute a team dedicated to improving quality.

You can release the feature in parts marked “alpha” or “beta” version. This will enable users to access the element with an understanding that it’s perhaps half-baked.

Bottomline 

QA engineers are responsible for product quality, but their job is to facilitate the development team. The right approach to communicating with developers is a skill expected from competent QA professionals. Follow the tips shared here to improve your collaborative skills.
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