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How to test on a remote site so as not to ruin the product and your life

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Over the past few weeks, experts on remote work have flooded the Internet, lists of life hacks and tips have appeared, hundreds of webinars have been held. Among the articles you can find the first impressions of people who before the pandemic did not even think about such a lifestyle. And there are articles of scorched distancers, for whom life has not changed at all.

Habr launched the Marathon udalenki , where selected companies share their experience in building a distributed team and organizing processes.

Each company approaches this experience in its own way. The most difficult thing is to maintain the level of productivity that you are accustomed to in the office and not to burn yourself, spreading tasks for days. Let's see how they do it?

Work or life?


Some companies have been working for many years with a distributed team, like the Quality Laboratory, which held an excellent conference last week. Description can be found here .

A lot of attention was paid to proper communication, the construction of regulations, areas of responsibility and monitoring the implementation of tasks. However, the strict enforcement of the requirements is offset by increased efficiency and a clear separation of work space and time from non-work. As a result, people remain productive and maintain a balance of work and leisure, do not burn out and work for the result. We hope the guys will someday share the recordings of the reports. ;)

Many teams realized that in conditions of self-isolation it is necessary to organize not only joint work, but also joint leisure. T-systems guys wrotecool stuff about how internal communications were transferred online - including morning yoga, children's workshops and even a lodge with guitars!

Sanity test - how not to lose your mind when working remotely?


But I, of course, are most interested in how the development and quality assurance processes are transferred to remote work. Here the guys from Test IT pleased, sharing a whole bunch of ideas. With their permission, I’ll leave them here:
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Against energy loss:

️
  1. Plan your day, taking into account personal mode, working hours and compulsory rest.
  2. ️ Eat every day at a specific time, and do not displace it due to sudden calls.
  3. ️ Be in touch during working hours, and after that - disconnect. If the will power runs out by evening, then you can instruct the computer to automatically block working applications. On MacOS, this can be done in the “Screen Time” settings, and on Windows through the “Parental Controls”.

For the emergence of new energy:

️
  1. Practice affordable sports: morning exercises, squats after phoning.
  2. ️ Try lunch sleep for 15-20 minutes.
  3. ️ Calling colleagues “is not the case”: a general call with a video broadcast works wonders, as if you were visiting each other, meeting with pets and family members.
  4. ️ Plan classes for development, for example, to pump in cooking.
  5. ️ Hug relatives, call friends and enjoy the spring, which will come anyway

On the Instagram team of the Test IT team, tester subscribers shared how they rebuilt their habits:
I'm doing everything as if I'm going to work. I wash my face, eat breakfast, dress, say goodbye to my family and close myself in the room to work. Going to the toilet and lunch, hello again!
The most difficult thing is to convince the cat that you do not play with him, not because you are bad, but because you are kind of at work
I make perceived "barriers" that I was at home, and now - work. To do this, my husband and I separated the rooms of the bedroom and the “office” from the work desks, put the “office” room in a working form (we remove the pillows, home rugs, etc.) we change clothes from home to something everyday, and we get up on the alarm clock of course )
But I still go to the office. There are almost no people here, quietly, nothing distracts

How not to lose on a remote site as a "quality assurance"?


At the end of March, at the very beginning of the mass transition to udalenka, there was an open webinar from the Test IT team about managing remote testing.

From the most interesting:

  • You can use attributes of the “User” type to configure the workflow for test reviews or automation, and in the comments on test cases to mention a specific user - he will immediately receive a notification in the system.
  • Auto tests can be run in parallel with manual tests via webhooks, and you can also set up a webhook to change the status of a test plan, tie it to a chatbot and send a notification to Slack, Telegram and other instant messengers.
  • Reports on the test plan and projects can be viewed by all team members. This way you can clearly show in what condition the project is and how the past test run was completed, including the load on each tester.
  • The tester’s personal account is his task manager, from there you can easily go to the current test plans, see personal statistics and buzz achievements!

All in all, it's worth a look.


If you find something else useful about the tester’s work on a remote site - share in the comments!

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