One way or another, all software testers have the common wish to make every future software user happy. This means that they need to learn how to interact with the product owner in any case.
The following are 4 simple steps on how to set up such cooperation and profit from it.
Attending Meetings Together
For some people, meetings are not the most pleasant part of the working process at a product company. But it’s a must-attend thing! Because seeing together how new features are created helps employees think about the way to test them in the future. Besides, QA engineers interact with the product more often, so they probably know more about it than the product owner (especially if the latter is new to the firm).
Such knowledge can be useful when discussing potential problems in the plan. For example, joint meetings help the tester and the product owner understand what goes according to plan and what is simply a waste of time and effort.
Organizing a “Three Friends” Meeting
A meeting of “three friends” is a meeting of the tester, the programmer, and the product owner. Discuss how a feature is to be built, and what the acceptance criteria for its evaluation are. Participation of testers in such a meeting is very important since they ask about performance of feature. And these answers the programmer and product manager have not thought of.
Also, the tester can help in developing acceptance criteria, so that they include the most important negative scenarios. For example, if you are working on a new feature of SMS-mailing, you can tell that one of the most popular acceptance criteria will be the reaction of the system to a situation where a user has not added his phone number.
Testing Beyond Acceptance Criteria
Even though you as a tester helped create the acceptance criteria, there’s probably a lot more that needs to be tested! It’s crucial to test in all possible web browsers, on different gadgets. You need to test the functionality of the new feature with your existing ones and analyze what exactly will happen in rare boundary cases.
For example, if you click the back button multiple times or “lose internet” during a transaction. Having a potential problem recorded, discuss it with the programmer and product manager. So that you can figure out exactly what and how need to be fixed before the official release.
The Product Manager Also Needs to Perform Acceptance Testing
So, if you’ve gone through the first three steps, you should now be sure that the feature is functional. Since you’ve been directly involved in the planners, you have a good understanding of how and when it will be used.
But before the final release, it’s extremely important that the product manager performs testing by himself. Thus, he makes sure that he really gets what he needs.
To Conclude
One of the key advantages of working in a development team is that everyone involved has different skills. As a tester, you must be familiar with the software and be ready to come up with effective boundary cases that need testing. Your product manager understands the business needs of the product and knows how to correctly design potential customer paths. By working together, the two of you can be sure that users have a good experience using your product.
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