Ever since some point last week, the software developers on my team at work have been asking the QA people if there are any of their tasks that we can help with.
In order to be a software developer, you have to know:
- How to follow instruction.
- How software works.
- How to describe if an error in the software.
- How to debug code and find the code causing an error.
- How to fix the code causing an error.
- How to write the code in the first place.
- How to test the code you’ve written and make sure it meets the acceptance criteria set forth by the person that told you to write the code.
To be a Quality Assurance Engineer, you have to know the first 2 of those bullet points. You should know the third bullet point, but in our experience, most software developers believe that very few Quality Assurance Engineers have achieved that third bullet point.
So while a QA person’s job is the most boring thing that a software developer can do (besides attending meetings), we are asking QA for some of their work because we won’t be assigned any more work until QA is finished with our last batch of work.
Well, we finished 99% of QA’s work last week. Now, today, the only things I have to do are:
- Act as though I’m busy enough so they can keep my contract going.
- I had a meeting this morning to give an update on my work status, ME:
- So I finished the last of the QA tasks that they would allow me to have
- I’m waiting for them to either give me another task or finish their last one so we can get some more work to do
- I see we’ve got a meeting scheduled this afternoon to discuss what we are talking about at tomorrow’s planning meeting
- So, that is pretty much it for me today. I hope something comes out of the meeting today so I’ll have something to say about that in tomorrow’s status update meeting.
- Patrick: Yeah, pretty much the same update as Joe, looking forward to the meeting to see if we can get any more work to do soon.
- Brandon: My update is the same as Joe’s and Patrick’s update, can’t wait to find out in today’s meeting what we are planning to talk about in tomorrow’s meeting.
- Team Leader: Sounds good, well if that is everything, I’ll see you guys at this afternoon’s meeting, otherwise, have a good rest of your day.
- Looking forward to attending another meeting to talk about another meeting.
QA will of course complain the day that the developers get work to do that we are holding out on them and they don’t have enough work to do.
I get so tired of this situation where QA wants us to hurry up and finish our work so we can do their work for them too. Management is wasting their resources by holding us back.