Nothing is worse than getting to the end of a hard-fought project, and then stumbling when it comes to quality. After months of staring at the same code, sometimes the finer details can get lost. Yes, there is a search field on the page, but does it actually – you know – search the site? Yes, we remembered the newsletter signup button in the footer, but does the email address actually make it into MailChimp? Yes, we included all the requested payment methods at checkout, but does payment actually flow through PayPal to the business owner?
We get blindness. We see a big beautiful responsive eCommerce website and pat ourselves on the back, because it looks awesome. But looks can be deceiving. As a developer who cares, you have to try to break the site, and I mean break it hard. You have to rigorously bash it with a mix of tests designed to make it fail. Not doing so is doing a disservice not only to yourself, but to our industry, and most importantly, to the partner who paid you to deliver something great.
We’re talking a lot about Bit by Bit this year. It encapsulates a lot of things for us, but at its core it speaks to everything being a process or journey. It’s building brick by brick; it’s first making something, and then making it better. Quality testing is very much a bit-by-bit process. We build something, we break it, and then we make it better.
We use a range of processes and tools to help us do this, but an important piece of the puzzle is BugHerd. We’ve been integrating BugHerd into our QA process for a couple of years now, and it just makes things smoother. You’d agree that delivering quality is a good thing, and continual improvement is a good thing. Well, BugHerd constantly improves how we deliver quality, which is a great thing! It can grow with your business; we’ve transitioned our large project development to an Agile/Scrum style of project management, and BugHerd was able to adapt with us. We have it connected to Pivotal Tracker, so the bugs automatically feed into there as well; allowing us greater visibility and reporting options. Add in great features like a Chrome browser extension, automatic screenshots, and real-time discussions, and you have a really full-featured solution that’s fun for the whole family. If you haven’t given BugHerd a look before, check it out!
