Just admit QA was right

Anyone that has worked in software quality assurance (QA) will tell you it’s often a frustrating and thankless job. A former Association for Software Testing president pegs the average QA engineer career at only four years. The linked article offers some advice for trying to retain good QA talent, but I’ll offer something not mentioned.

If only it were that easy…

Having worked on at least 15 software development cycles, here is what often happens:

1. QA identifies several very serious defects or usability problems

2. Engineering or management thinks QA is exaggerating the issues

3. The software ships

4. Bugs in the release get negative press, and users are frustrated by usability problems

5. A rapid software update is prepared to address the issues

My experience has shown that serious issues are almost always known issues at the time of shipping. They just aren’t prioritised high enough to warrant getting addressed. But it’s also true that QA does tend to overreact.

Let’s add some steps

In between steps 4 and…