As we consider communication challenges, what would we do if those challenges didn't just end up being an issue of finding or missing bugs but potentially being an issue that could spell the difference between life or death? Did that get your attention? Yeah, it got mine, too.
Rachael Lovallo focuses her quality initiatives on the emergency healthcare industry. As she clearly stated at the beginning "we can’t afford bugs, as they could endanger real humans".
Make bugs as bullet-proof and reproducible as possible.
This may seem obvious but I would guess that missing anything or being vague would be something that would cause anxiety in this particular environment. By making sure that we identify all of the aspects that point to the bug, a reliable reproduction strategy, and an expected behavior or output to compare with is critical.
Talk to people writing the code you test
Again, seems evident but how many of us really communicate about the code that we are testing? How much of it do we really know inside and out? How confident would we be to be able to go through and read the code and know exactly what it is doing? I know for myself that I wouldn't be able to do that all on my own,
Ask for a second set of eyes on your work
Oh, I can so relate to this! As someone who basically deals with data transformations at the moment and the methods involved in that covers so many tools and points of contact that it just isn't possible for me to know where everything is and what I should be looking at. Fortunately, the development team I work with are great about showing me the areas I need to hit and to also recognize where I find areas of friction or that are less than optimal for being able to complete tasks. By getting them to walk the workflows and steps with me I am able to uncover with them ways to make the overall flow work better.
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