I want to talk to QA engineers for product research

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I’m the creator of Jenkins, and I’m looking to talk to practitioners for product research.

More specifically, I’m targetting “triage”; I’m talking about seeing test results, classifying those failures, figuring out which ones matter and which ones are noise, analyzing the root cause, passing them on to the right developers, and tracking the fix until it makes its way to testing.

If this sounds familiar to you, I’d love to talk to you. If you know somebody whose job is to do exactly this, I’d like to talk to them!

I’d like to walk you through our thoughts & what we are planning to build, and I’d love to hear from you whatever you have to say. I’m trying to make the life better for you & your colleagues, so please help us help you!

It’ll only take 90 mins, and I promise this will be a fun conversation. You will also get a $50 amazon gift card as our appreciation.

If this is something you are willing to do with me, please drop me a note: Product research interview: QA triage - Kohsuke Kawaguchi

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My first thought when reading about ‘test results’ was - it depends.
I can see several ways of getting to an outcome of a test. Some for example:

  • you hear something in a conversation or meeting;
  • you read something in a plan, an email, a paper, a requirement, a claim;
  • you see a product diagram, whiteboard architecture model;
  • you build a custom script you execute locally and observe something directly or indirectly;
  • you browse through product code;
  • you do a testing session where you save questions, notes, and potential issues;
  • might be some regularly run automation; or a one time thing;

As for triaging anything it depends. Some ways for example:

  • talk to a developer, an architect, a UI/UX, or a client to understand better some context;
  • talk to a manager, or stakeholder;
  • Check with another tester;
  • search through the oracles;
  • compare to existing or past issues;
  • check the risks it might imply;
  • let it go as it’s trivial;

Most of them depend on subjective mental models. Sometimes they get filtered as well through other people’s models. But it’s temporary.

Some test results now might be interpreted differently later or might have been earlier: quality is value to some people at some time.

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@ipstefan Thanks for your reaction. Of all the activities that constitute triage, what is the biggest time sink for you?