Always Be Testing

Early in my career I worked in QA. Part of the process in those days was running around with a floppy disk on a Friday afternoon and sticking it in a bunch of machines.

In my rush to get to Happy Hour my testing sometimes lacked thoroughness. A couple of problem releases over the years taught me a valuable lesson.

It’s easy to gloss over testing.

Don’t.

Create a checklist. Follow it. Every time. When a new scenario comes up, add it to the checklist.

If you can do this in an automated way, that’s even better.

Here’s a recent example. The screen shot is taken from a photo sharing website – the offending party’s name is removed.

Note the problems in the subject line. They’re missing my name and instead just use a blank space and a comma.

I also have my the new privacy settings in macOS Mail enabled which blocks images from loading.

Both of these problems might seem like little details but they impact my perception of the brand.

Always be testing.