Hello everyone,

Matt Audette and I wanted to summarize our recent talk covering quality assurance and testing briefly.

Just a reminder that you can find a recording of that talk, where we dive deeper into the topics - here.

Core Quality Assurance Concepts:

• Embrace testing
  • Everyone has experience testing, even outside of software development
  • Testing occurs naturally when cooking, editing writing, or improving projects
• Understand QA's dual purpose
  • Ensuring technology works as intended (positive testing)
  • Ensuring graceful failure when it doesn't (negative testing)
• Share quality responsibility across the team
  • As a solo developer, your team might include users, volunteers in a software community, even friends and family.
  • Test early to prevent compounding problems and inform feature development
  • Test under real-world conditions, not just ideal scenarios
  • Focus testing efforts on core functionality before less-used features
• Implement User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
  • Recognize that developers and testers bring unacknowledged proficiency to testing
  • Utilize public beta testing to cover diverse platforms and environments
  • Conduct end-user UAT to validate core workflows and assumptions
  • Consider one-on-one UAT for detailed feedback despite time investment
  • Recognize how different UAT levels complement each other
• Leverage AI tools strategically
  • AI can fast-track the development of unit tests for early functionality testing
  • Acknowledge the learning curve associated with AI tools if you are new to using them to code
  • Remember, they aren't infallible and may shift effort from development to debugging
  • Stay aware of their rapid improvement trajectory

Matt and I are always happy to answer questions or provide guidance.
Please don't hesitate to reach out.

Alex