Gold Is in Your Trash Can - How to Maximize Feedback’s Value from Testing - Alexandre Bauduin

With new development techniques, a couple of things have changed in the testing world. Most of the time the so-called “QA department” went dead when seeking more efficiency and trying to cut costs. A new breed of tester was born: The embedded testers. We want to have quicker feedback on the product, testers have to work hand to hand with the developers, test immediately when code is produced.

Before the AGILE transformation, testers were like AWACS, planes fitted with a big radar, capable of seeing far away, at the verge of the horizon, relaying crucial tactical information to command center. QA was mandated to perform reviews, inspections and testing on the whole project. 

When we are testing, regardless of techniques or tools, we are learning and observing what is going on with the product. We report defects based on requirements and good engineering judgment. Writing defects in a bug tracking is one thing, but in fact, testers are located at an ideal spot watching the project taking off. 

The software industry does not pay as much attention to waste as much as other industries that are deep into lean manufacturing. In aviation, all issues are scrutinized and taken very seriously even if they are (just) incidents.

What can we derive from issues or bugs (we call them “snags“ in aviation) so that the same problem never will occur again? Why do we have to report the same issues about a login screen over and over? Fixing an issue is important for the product but understanding how that issue made its way inside the product is a great value for the company. Not only we can fix the issue but we can improve processes and more. Not only we become better at building the product but we get better at building any product. 

In this talk, I will expose my experience as a test strategy lead in the flight simulation world and of course savings that have been achieved by bringing into software lean manufacturing concepts like Kaizen. Flight simulation is a mix of software and serious hardware where we have to deal with a 643 pages long test requirement document from aviation authorities. We will go over the land of dashboards, retrospectives, requirements and of course testing and all that with concrete problems I have bumped in many times.