First Week at Propeller: A QA Perspective
I completed a contract role at the end of July this year and began to embark on the exuberant task of finding new employment. My main goal in this job hunt was to gain a role in a small company that I could help grow, and in turn, advance in my career as a Software Quality Engineer. Wanting to avoid complacency and repetition I decided to steer clear of larger companies. In talking to others about their roles at larger corporations, I was told time and again, “You’ll do the same thing every day.” It would be beneficial to my career to be involved with a business that would allow me to make decisions and learn by trying new things.
AngelList became my favorite job-hunting site, as it catered exactly to what I was looking for in an employer. With several ways to interact with employers and vice-versa, I soon sparked interest with potential suitors.
I remember my first interactions with Propeller…
A few brief emails back and forth between led to a phone interview with our project manager, Michelle. We exchanged ideas about processes and tools I was accustomed to in my recent positions, and a few days later I was asked to enter the Labs for an in-person interview. After delving into more detail about how my recent day-to-day routines were structured, I was asked, “So what if you came into a position and there was nothing?”
Needless to say, there was far from “nothing” in terms of processes when I joined the team. Weekly sprints, code freeze, and stand-ups had been implemented prior to my arrival at Propeller, and I could see that there was a strong desire to incorporate all of this into a suitable and evolving structure. It became apparent to me early on that there were strong points to the company’s process, and I could also see where my experience would be beneficial in developing these processes.
My first week at Propeller was a blur.
What I do remember, however, is that I was greeted by good people in an easy-going work environment, a copious amount of Oreos, and a staggering array of projects spanning the likes of web and mobile applications to virtual reality.
I quickly learned who was who and who was on what project, etc. Having become accustomed to dedicating entire sprint cycles to one particular feature in an app I knew inside and out, I soon came to realize that prioritization would be my key to survival in a world of one-week sprints for several features spanning many projects.
Appropriate with the QA badge comes the commission of bearing of bad news — the duty of informing dev that there’s an issue with their code, or explaining to design that their design does not make sense from a usability standpoint. It takes a certain level of collaboration and clear communication between dev, design, and QA to understand that this process is far from a blame game, but instead implemented to encourage the production of quality products. In the end we are all fighting the same fight and working towards the same end goal. Of course the wins even things out, but software development truly has its peaks and valleys.
Being in QA, one develops a sort of craft (or maybe it’s desire) to “break” apps. This serves the position well, as weak points are discovered (and hopefully resolved) before deployment. But beyond the primal urges to break things, structured test cases, clearly-written bug reports, and full-scale, organized regression testing serve a more important role in testing and engineering overall quality. Being clear, tedious, and thorough with all these factors of testing has not only added to the level of quality of apps produced at Propeller, but to the level of organization and efficiency as well.
By no means have my contributions here at Propeller been a one-way street. Since joining this team, I have been able to experience every facet of a continuous delivery operation first-hand, including some of the more technical aspects. On any given day I find myself immersed in forming test strategies, design collaboration, and even assisting with customer relations throughout the lifecycle of a project. I could be testing the server of an app in the early stages of development one minute (hooray for Paw!), and releasing a production build of an entirely different project the next. I’ve become accustomed to not only looking at programs from an end user’s perspective, but from an internal one as well.
I’ve been at Propeller for just over three months now, and it’s been a vastly different experience from any company I’ve worked with in the past. Being part of a team that supports growth, encourages one another, and supplies Clif bars on the reg has truly been a rewarding endeavor. With a positive atmosphere and a hard-working, dedicated cast of characters, I feel I have found my place here at Propeller, and I look forward to continuing the evolvement of this QA department.
