Susanne Abdelrahman
Susanne Abdelrahman
Head of Product Quality & Operations
She/her
I'm a product quality nerd based in NYC. Also a mama, reader, baker of delicious pies, and lover of naps, sunshine, and macarons. I write about making software less awful at theproductmindedqa.com
🎂 MoTaBirthday | January 28, 2025
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Continuing with an experiment. Let's look at the talk and workshop descriptions of MoTaCon 2026 and share my thoughts and reflections before the talk/workshop has happened. And then, hopefully, sh...
13 Aug
I've never done a proper podcast, yet here I am.20 episodes in.Weekly cadence.Great quality conversations.Catching up with old friends.Making some new ones.100% stepping outside of my comfort zone....
4 Jun
Shift‑left security: building protection from day one
The hidden leadership of Quality Professionals: skills you only earn when everything goes to hell
When systems stop behaving: controlled chaos...
21 May
The lineup is out and oh my... how exciting is it?These are the contributors we've announced publicly... but let me tell you something. Every single person walking through the Brighton Dome doors b...
19 May
Find out what’s really behind testing hires that fail (hint: it’s rarely because the tester couldn’t handle the job!)
29 Jul
An honest conversation about care, influence, and the ripple effects of doing quality work when nobody has to listen to you.
22 Apr
Unpack how leading with quality means staying clear on scope, making trade-offs, and influencing without authority.
30 Jun
Mobbing
Mobbing is a collaborative software development and testing technique where an entire team works on the same task, at the same time, in the same space (physical or virtual), and on a single computer. It extends the concept of pair programming to the whole group, including developers, testers, product owners, and other stakeholders.One person acts as the "driver" (controlling the keyboard/mouse) while others serve as "navigators" (providing direction), with frequent rotation of roles to keep everyone engaged. The practice uses "strong-style navigation" where the driver follows guidance from the navigators. This ensures all ideas flow through the group and creates shared understanding in real-time.
Mobbing applies to many activities:
Mob programming involves teams collectively writing code, making design decisions, and solving complex technical problems together
Mob testing brings diverse perspectives to exploratory testing, test automation, or bug investigation, combining domain knowledge, technical skills, and testing expertise
Mob learning uses the format for onboarding new team members, learning new technologies, or tackling unfamiliar problems where collective knowledge accelerates understanding
Benefits of mobbing:
Eliminating Handoffs: Tasks are completed in one pass (writing, testing, and reviewing happen simultaneously), which significantly reduces "Work in Progress" (WIP) and cycle time.
Knowledge Sharing: It is one of the fastest ways to spread technical and domain knowledge across a team, preventing "silos" where only one person understands a specific feature.
Higher Quality: With "many sets of eyes" on the code as it is written, technical debt and bugs are often caught and fixed instantly.
Team Building: It builds mutual respect through meaningful, mission-critical work rather than artificial exercises.
Common challenges:
Intensity: Constant collaboration can be mentally draining and may not suit all personality types.
Cost Perception: May be seen as "inefficient" because multiple people are working on the same thing, though proponents argue the higher quality and lack of rework offset this.
Dominant Personalities: Stronger voices may overshadow others if the group does not strictly adhere to inclusive "kindness, consideration, and respect" rules.
Canary deployment
Canary deployment is a deployment strategy where new changes are released to a small subset of users or systems before rolling out to everyone. This approach helps teams detect issues early and minimize the impact of potential problems.
Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC)
Product Development Life Cycle (PDLC) is the structured process that teams follow to take a product from initial idea through to delivery and beyond. The 5 phases of the PDLC are:
Discovery & Ideation: identify user problems, explore potential solutions, and validate assumptions
Solution Definition: define product requirements, designs, and technical plans
Build & Test: develop and validate the product
Launch: deploy the product
Monitor & Maintain: track product performance and make improvements or fixes as needed
QACI
QACI (pronounced “quacky”) is a responsibility model developed by Susanne Abdelrahman that adapts the traditional RACI framework specifically for quality practices. The memorable pronunciation was suggested by Simon Tomes. QACI stands for:
Quality Practice: A specific quality activity or process, like release readiness determination, bug triage, or writing a test strategyAccountable: The person who owns the outcome and is held responsible for the practice working effectivelyContributor: People who actively participate in or support the practice. These folks do part of the workInformed: People who need visibility into the practice and its outcomes but don't participate directly
Empathy mapping
Empathy mapping is a collaborative visualization tool that helps teams develop deeper understanding of users and stakeholders by mapping their experiences across four key dimensions: what they say, think, do, and feel.
Originally developed for user experience design, empathy maps create shared understanding by capturing both observable behaviors (what people say and do) and internal experiences (what they think and feel). The process involves placing a person or persona at the center and filling in insights around the four quadrants, ideally based on real research rather than assumptions.
Quality engineers can use empathy mapping to understand both end users and internal stakeholders. For users, it helps identify quality characteristics that matter most in real-world usage. For stakeholders like product managers or developers, it reveals how they experience quality trade-offs and what motivates their decisions, making quality advocacy more effective.
Comments
(3)
Simplicity is at the core of The Ahh Test
Love the Ahh test!!
One of the values at Dropbox in the earlier years was called Cupcake 🧁 it was very similar (we’d ask ourselves/each other, “well, is this cupcake?”)
MoTaverse Match
Love this!! 🙌
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Half-Baked, Fully Shipped: My Therapist Accidentally Fixed My AI Strategy
(theproductmindedqa.com)
17 Apr
Visited an Observatory link
The agentic coding ladder is a list of things you give up - by Jed Arden
Community Star
1 day ago
Visited an Observatory link
Agentic Code Quality Quality now depends on the constraints you set around your agents. - by Addy Osmani
Community Star
1 day ago
Learner completed your lesson
7.2.0 of MoT Software Quality Engineering Certificate
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1 day ago
