QA
Quality Assurance Fails When Coca-Cola Tweets Excerpt From Mein Kampf
Coke received a lot of flack when their #MakeItHappy Campaign inadvertently tweeted an excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Coke ultimately terminated the campaign, but not before Gawker cashed in on the prank. As Quality Assurance at R/GA, we challenge ourselves through out-of-the-box thinking to learn from mistakes, even when they are not our own. If […]
Let’s Ship! A (Speculative) Lesson Learned from the iOS 8.0.1 Launch
iOS 8.0.1 was not a big success. It was released about a week after iOS 8.0 officially launched. The build’s goal was to fix a few bugs, but instead, 8.0.1 turned into a debacle that will cost Apple time and money. Worse yet, it’s bound to lower people’s lofty perception of Apple’s commitment to quality. […]
Data Driven Automated Testing
There are times in software testing when you have a lot scenarios or features to validate but not a lot of time for testing. This may also involve running the same tests repeatedly over a period of time. In cases like this, I recommend using a method of test automation known as data driven testing. For example, […]
Tips for Selenium Testing Newbies
I recently became very interested in test automation. I had worked with some tools like Selenium IDE (Firefox) or JMeter previously, but not extensively. Although automation requires some programming experience, I didn’t let myself become intimidated by the challenge. When my first opportunity to automate testing presented itself I first had to select the right tool […]
Quality Can’t Be Emulated, Imitated, or Simulated
Testers find bugs. Finding bugs is one of the main goals for someone in QA. We strive to achieve a high quality product by finding bugs and issues before launch. It’s not exactly how W. Edwards Deming described it, but it is the way that software development works for the most part in fast paced […]
Three tips for successful retail installations
During my short thirteen years at R/GA, I have been a part of numerous projects in retail, events and branded spaces. In addition to software testing, these projects often include hardware, OS and networking configurations specific to the space. From a development and testing perspective, there are three important requisites for a successful retail project: […]
Can QA defy the Law of the Iron Triangle?
The standard project management iron triangle consists of three points: “on time” (fast), “on budget” (cost-effective) and “of high quality” (functions as expected). Conventional wisdom says that you can pick two but cannot have all three. In reality, for a project to succeed, the three points need to be balanced. This high wire act is one of the […]
The Automation Misconception: Should you really automate your testing?
“Let’s automate!” is a newly popular rallying cry from technology companies. “Looking for a QA manager who will transform our manual process into a 95% automated process!” teases a job listing for a role at a technology company. Many companies see automation as a “quick fix” for testing. Not so fast. These statements imply manual and automated testing are […]
The New Breed of QA
During a recent meeting an R/GA Technical Director referred to one of our senior testers as part of “a new breed of QA.” I found it interesting given that this particular tester had been at R/GA for almost ten years. This immediately introduced the possibility that the new breed is actually a rare mutation and […]
