A Tweet: What Makes A Great QA Person?

Mike Heade is the QA Master here at iterasi. He’s also known as “The Hammer.” What makes a great QA person? Mike has his own healthy look at the topic. I tweeted the question. I love doing that to see what kinds of replies come back. I know some pro bloggers, like Marshall Kirkpatrick, who tweet questions for their posts and get all kinds of replies. In my book, that’s modern reporting. The collective is your reporting pool. Sure is different than when I was a reporter back in the early 90s. You could ask for reader response but you’d have to publish the question in the newspaper to get an answer back!

Anyway, I put out a tweet and received some interesting replies.

I asked: “What makes a great qa person? What is the right amount of tension between the engineers and the qa folks?”

Sharon Greenfield sent two tweets. Sharon, an interactive producer by trade, said it all comes down to respect:

….when engineers respect and appreciate qa for the mop-up, when qa appreciates eng for creating.

I said that from what I understand, the relationship can be very sensitive. Even joking around can get a bit dicey. Sharon replied:

“AND, when it’s not taken personally, when the focus is always on the best for the user/product…and that is communicated.”

Greg Hughes is a fellow Gnomedex pal here in town who now works as an IT security consultant. Previously he worked at Corillian in a senior IT and security role. He tweeted:

“I hire QA Engineers. They work as peers on the same team (literally) as software engineers. Respect is pretty easy - its level”

Well, I have only worked with Mike Heade a few weeks but I am already impressed. He’s also a good sport.

Bread and butter, Mike. Bread and butter. :-)