I do not have a good track record with software QA (quality assurance) teams. In my previous business, WebCentral.com, I had about six developers.
I never had a QA team, because I always figured they/I could test the work. Plus, I used to wait for the customers to find the problems and then fix them quickly.
Back then, we only needed to support a couple of browser versions and screen resolution was limited and customers were more forgiving and we didn’t have Twitter.
Consider what you’re supporting today: multiple browsers, different operating systems, mobile versions, varying screen resolutions.
Customers have a tendency to complain loudly to a large audience even if your product is free and business logic is getting a lot more complicated.
I have since learned the virtues of good quality assurance. I am now a believer. Good QA means you deliver a better product and your developers focus on coding.
The key to good QA is getting good test plans – and lots of them. Then it’s throwing people at the test plans.
These people run each test on each device and on each browser, etc, and they do it again each time you make a change. QA can be a “set-and-forget” function once you have good test plans written.
If your development team say, “We use automated test systems – we can do it ourselves,” that’s perfect.
Tell them that you will reduce their hourly salary to $8/hour for every hour they spend playing or even thinking about this stuff.
This is something that you can, you should, you must outsource. Not one single second of your developers’ time should be spent on this.
In fact, the development team really should not manage the QA process; a QA manager or a product manager should do that.
When developers manage QA, testing tends to skew toward what they know is working. Development should not drive QA, nor should it set the QA agenda.
As the business owner, you should expect to see a summary of the QA tests. It’s simple to read, there are nice big coloured pie charts that should show which tests Pass, which are Blocked and which ones Fail, etc. It gives you visibility of the project’s progress.
Should I outsource development? It depends on the type of development.
If you’re developing some really key, special technology, like a new video codec, a real-time chat protocol, or special security application, then no, you shouldn’t outsource the key or core of that project.
Determine which parts of the project should be moved to a remote team. Then, there will be lots of stuff that you should simply outsource.
However, when you do outsource development, never rely on a single developer. With all remote development teams we try to achieve a productivity multiplier effect.
Have one senior developer and buddy them up with two or three smart junior developers. It gives you more bang-for-your-buck.
It also means knowledge is shared and in a few years, those juniors will be senior developers.
Now for the fun part: get yourself a PA. In fact, get your team a PA.
However, this is not the kind of PA that is going to be checking with QANTAS about the vintage champagne they are serving in first class on the A380 from London to Sydney (I think it’s Louis Roederer).
This is someone who can do the little things. Get them to save you two to five minutes here and there. Start simple and then build.
In this scenario, our PA’s name is Ann:
None of the above is rocket science. In fact, I can probably do every task faster, but I value my time at $1,000 an hour. Ann the PA is $8 an hour.
The same thing applies to my in-house developers. Sure, they can go and spend 10 minutes screwing around on Pizzahut.com and order their own dinner – but it will take them 10 minutes.
It takes 30 seconds of their time for the PA to ask them what topping they want. (I don’t trust developers with my credit card anyway; the last time I did, I got a $1,000 bill from Amazon when someone ordered a High I/O Quadruple Extra Large EC2 instance server and forgot to shut it down.)
More importantly, hiring a PA sends a message to your team.
You’re telling them, “You are valuable, and your time is valuable, so here is someone who is available to help you with the ‘little stuff.’ Now get back to work!”
And it’s not as over-the-top as you would think, but you might even consider two PAs and have them cover 8am to midnight – with a few hours overlap.
When you’re working at home at 10pm, it’s great being able to throw a simple task to your PA.
But it also prevents you from having a “single point of failure.” If a PA is sick or leaves, you have a backup.
There is always research/data harvesting work they can be doing in the background for you.
Finally, about that champagne…
[11:46:45] Ann: Hi Lloyd, I called QANTAS, they are not sure of the vintage of the Champagne, but they told me they know that they are serving Comtes de Champagne Taittinger on that flight.
Thank you, Ann.
Lloyd Ernst has had a distinguished career in the Australian IT industry as an internet pioneer and entrepreneur. In the early 90s, Lloyd and two friends started PowerUp ISP modestly in a house garage which eventually grew to become Queensland’s largest ISP. Presently, Lloyd is focused on CloudStaff.com and Process-Box.com.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
