The structure and focus of QA team meetings can vary significantly depending on several factors within the company. It’s important to consider whether QAs are integrated into feature teams or operate as a separate testing unit. The distinction between manual and automation QA roles and the company’s size and team composition also play a crucial role.
Some potential activities for these meetings:
- Business Knowledge Sharing: Ensuring everyone is aligned with the business aspects and objectives.
- Production Incident Reviews: Discuss recent incidents, their impact, and action points to prevent future occurrences.
- Case Studies from Testing: Sharing interesting or unusual cases encountered during testing, which can provide valuable insights.
- Tool and Technique Workshops: Knowledge-sharing sessions about new tools and investigative techniques.
- Expert-Led Workshops: Learning from experienced colleagues through in-depth workshops.
- Pair Programming Sessions: Collaborative coding or testing sessions to tackle complex problems.
- Hackathons: Organizing internal events to innovate and solve challenges creatively.
However, there are challenges to consider:
- Preparation Time: These activities require significant preparation to be effective.
- Cultural Adaptation: Fostering a culture of constant learning and improvement takes time and effort.
- Engagement and Utility: The meetings should be more than formal sync-ups; they need to be engaging and genuinely useful. This might mean holding them less frequently, such as once a month, with additional sessions as needed based on demand.
But the main goal is to ensure these meetings are not just a routine catch-up but a tool for continuous learning, sharing, and improvement. Communication is the key