Zone’s lead QA, Steve Ikobayo, describes how our technology-agnostic approach means we are always open to adopting new ways of working…
I recently presented at the South West Test meet-up in Bristol to discuss Zone’s approach to testing and how adopting a new approach can improve outcomes and a product’s end-performance. Here’s a summary of my talk…
At Zone, we value different skillsets irrespective of background or programming language. Therefore, talented candidates easily fit into our technology-agnostic approach and culture. In terms of tooling, we use the most popular types suitable for modern technology. This includes TestRail, which is used to manage our test cases and provide status/coverage reports. Jira is used as our bug tracking tool and defects management system. We use Jenkins to manage deployment into different environments, while most of our testers love to use Postman for API/integration testing. We also own a licence for cloud cross-browser testing tools.
We are always open to trying new tools and ways of working to improve our processes. Our automation frameworks vary and are tailored according to the technology used on the product, hence several frameworks have been built from the ground up, eg Cucumber Java, C#Specflow, Protractor, Cucumber Ruby and Cyprus IO. From my professional experience, I have built automation frameworks and think they certainly have a role in testing. However, I strongly believe that bugs are discovered by human beings (exploratory manual testing) and not machines. Therefore, we have around a 60:40 ratio of manual to automation testing.
Although we are predominantly an Agile environment, our ways of working are determined by what is best for the delivery team and the product. We are experts in different project delivery methodologies such as Agile Scrum/Kanban, waterfall and ‘wagile’ for small-scale products.
Historically, security and accessibility testing have been the most neglected aspect of software quality engineering. At Zone, we prioritise this and adhere to industry best practices such as applying top 10 OWASP and WCAG accessibility testing guidelines.
Just like every other software delivery company, we have our challenges. Resourcing is an industry-wide challenge as we endeavour to have the most suitable team-mates working on projects to ensure their success. We constantly seek to hire the best talent, so if you are familiar with any of the automation frameworks mentioned above and are passionate about products and quality, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
