UAT at ADB

I am getting a little time from my weekend to write this entry coz I don't want to forget one extraordinary experience. Hmmm, maybe this will take ten minutes before I shut down my laptop and enjoy the rest of my weekend.

Our project is now undergoing User Acceptance Testing even if functional testing is not yet done.

I say that I had never been in a more chaotic UAT ever wherein there is no definite plan and "anything goes" is the name of the game. So what can you expect??? A UAT with no plan + QAs without team spirit = A TOTAL UAT FIASCO (I must say)...

Hahaha! I got so frustrated for the past week... I mean, I had always been a team player myself and seeing my fellow QAs who just want to stand on their own even if they are working on the same project, really frustrates me to the point of demotivation.

But then, I am also a self-starter and proactive. I try to help organize things. I experienced being a "referee" between two fellow QAs last week because they are having a "professional" cat fight via Lotus Notes "over" a simple subject of "Test Script Template", which I devised originally.

Hayss... And to think that these QAs are much experienced in terms of number of years in QA and much older than me... Anyway, at least someone in the team knows how to draw the line.

Then, during the actual UAT, since there are so many setbacks (being unplanned) and for the first time in my QA life, I heard users telling me that "we" are wasting "their" valuable time. It is a good thing that I know how to handle these situations and stay cool, calm and collected.

One good outcome is that our tech leader learned a lesson. So she called for a meeting after the UAT. Wow! Another fiasco! We discussed the template, the process or lack thereof, etc... People in the team don't know how to handle meetings...

Another thing that shocked me to a point of total disbelief is hearing from 2 of my fellow QAs that "EXPECTED RESULTS" is not needed in the testscript/test case. Three of us disagreed. I even told them that expected results are the basis of pass and fail. The tech leader just won't listen to the likes of us who just joined the team. The 2 QAs who joined the team a year or two ahead of us won. So, whether we like it or not, Expected Results was removed. I cannot accept it until now. I cannot believe hearing those things from fellow QAs who keep on insisting that they are experienced enough in our field. One of them even came from Accenture and she keeps pointing out that she came from a process-driven environment. Yeah right? Expected Results off a test script/test case? WOW!!! I am surrounded by incompetent people who just happen to have the biggest superiority complex ever. But I don't care. I know how to do things right. My friend (fellow QA) is so annoyed that she keeps having curt discussion with these QAs. I, however, choose to stay quiet. I am not stooping down to their level anyway and I won't waste my energy convincing people who don't want to be convinced. As long as I know my own skills and the things that I can do, I don't care what they do with theirs.

I won't comment from now on. I will just do what I think is right. Even if they removed the expected results from the template, who cares? I will still add it somewhere...

But one of the nice outcomes of the UAT is that I also met some nice people (users) like Miss Malou and the head of a department that I didn't get the chance to know his name. I get respect from some developers because I am catching bugs that other QAs can't find. Some developers also come to me for help. I feel happy somehow.

Fortunately, the food is good during UAT. So, that is one thing I am happy about too...