Thursday, June 23, 2011

TRUST is an important thing for a Quality Engineer or Tester.

It's been more than 6 years that I have been working with various Quality Engineers and every one is different from other and have unique working styles. But the most common thing which is seen with a tester, Quality Engineer or a Quality Analyst is Level of TRUST they gain from various team members like Developer, Manager, Product Manager and other folks in the team.
TRUST between the team members is very important and it becomes very important for Testers in two ways -

1. Other's TRUST on them is important and governed by the way a Tester performs within the team. 

2. TRUST Level a Tester has on the developers. (Although it's recommend to never TRUST the code programmer has written :) )

Here we are not going to discuss the second part about TRUST but the first part.

Being a Tester/QE/QA, gaining TRUST of team members is a very important thing as we own the responsibility of best possible quality of final product or application. 

If I take a simple example of the way a Quality manager deals with his/her team-members (testers) depend a lot on the way each individual has gained the TRUST over a longer period of time.
A Quality Manager has a very BIG responsibility with him to deliver best Quality Product in the market although he/she is not directly testing everything. TRUST is the thing that gives him/her confidence about overall quality on the Software at various stage of a Development cycle.There would be few people who have gained that trust and managers doesn't like to follow up too much with these kinds of folks, but story changes completely with folks who have not gained that trust. 
The worst part is when someone gains the trust and then looses it with some silly things.

IDEA of this write-up is to help people understand the significance of TRUST in workplace. Everyone wants to grow in her/his career and key is to work hard and improvise with time. Trust me that honest and sincere working habits also impact our personal life. If we do our work in well, there is very rare probability of getting stressed up unless work is not in control or there are other factors involved.


I have seen people having different thoughts like -

"Why should I work too much" .. "What if I complete a task of 5hrs in 1Hr and say OK" ...
Personal life in one these things change their way of thinking as well and all those things impact their personal life too! For a manager or a lead, it's not a very difficult thing to judge that things are going wrong. And there are very simple solutions to resolve such problems. But the harm is that the TRUST level goes down and it also impacts the way or the other.
 
In Software Industry, there are lot of practices to overcome such flaws which can impact the progress of a project through low confidence level or less TRUST. But the important question is why should a person do such things.

Most of the people in Software Industry work very hard during the starting years of their career and over time aspirations change. With that, working style also changes... but Testers need to be very careful while doing their work and about their involvement in various other things around them.

TRUST is the BIGGEST ASSET for a Tester and every tester should keep this in mind. Building GOOD Level of TRUST takes times and taking it to lower levels can be instantaneous.

3 comments:

Vibha said...

Lovely article VJ. It is very true. Sometimes one does not realize the importance of it till one loses it.

Anchita said...

A very honest and motivating perspective of seeing things as a Tester :)

Travellingcamera said...

Thanks Vibha and Anchita !!!

Good to hear that you guys liked it... :)