Customer Support Blog

SQABD Lightning Talks was a superb session organized for the software development professionals in Bangladesh. The event was sponsored by Therap and included participants from Relisource, Grameen Solutions, Tiger IT, Somewhere In, BIPL, Software People and Trippet Labs among others. Sajjadul Hakim, Manager SQA of Therap hosted the entire show wonderfully. We had nearly 130 people in the audience.

The event had 10 speakers from programming, testing, project management, process management etc. Each gave 5 minutes or shorter speeches on software development from a practitioners approach followed by a Q&A session after each speech. The discussions became interesting as people sort of questioned and challenged each other on their viewpoints. Trippet Labs tried to cover points on “Having Fun at Work”, and many of the participants agreed to this idea. This discussion also raised questions on using IM clients (e.g. Jabber) inside the office and how effective can they be for internal communication. While Hasan from Somewhere In talked about “Accurate and Bug Free Coding”. The topic was challenged by other participants as what’s more important: to develop software that are 100% bug free or to meet release deadlines and continuously release product updates. Liaquat from BIPL talked about one of the most interesting topics regarding “Communication with Customers”. His focus was to understand what customer wants first, and to develop applications based on actual customer needs. He also talked about making better documentation and writing proper requirements based on the knowledge we acquire from our customers. Simon from Relisource raised a very controversial topic on the power and importance that needs to be given to the Software Quality Assurance team. Questions were raised regarding the right environment for testing in a software company and how test engineers are sometimes neglected by developers that results in buggy software. Everyone agreed that the invisible wall between test engineers and developers needs to go away, and more frequent information exchange needs to take place.

Some SQA team members also demanded the right to block a release if they felt the testing is not complete or if the test revealed bugs. This “License to Kill” was then again challenged by several key people at the event, including Masum, our Chief Software Developer. Questions were asked if Testing Team will take the full responsibility with that right when a release is delayed. Masum also focused on the whole management, marketing, customer relations and development teams who all should have the ability to decide. The discussion lead to points such as giving the management to have better control over release and the SQA team should let all other teams be familiar with their findings so everyone can make a combined effort to take such decisions. The session also discussed on topics such as “Time Management for Testing” and why enough time needs to be given to testing for bugs. Concerns were raised for the SQA team to have the ability for communication, feedback and courage.

One of our Project Managers Mozammel explained briefly about a new and exciting concept of “Git”. He gave details of how the new content tracker helps developers commit changes of their code much more easily. He further explained how “Git” is faster than other such applications, how its distributed nature makes it more secure for any kind of system failure and how it helps to work in offline environment among other benefits. Other fascinating topics such as “Developing without Being a Developer” by Dahlia from our SQA team that informed us how SQA and other teams also contribute to the development lifecycle of a software. “Testing with Non-testing Tools” by Intekhab from Therap’s SQA team explained how many free, open source and easy to find tools can be used replacing costly automated tools in some occasions.

The evening turned out to be both informative and enjoyable for all. The session also included a part where Masum briefly discussed about Therap and its work. Many of the companies gained better idea of what Therap has been doing from this and also from the videos that were played in the breaks.The food in the break was great, and gave us a nice opportunity to meet many people in our field who are working in other companies across the city. Therap gained huge popularity and the discussions really helped everyone from any part of the software industry to understand and appreciate work of all teams behind a successful application.

Comments are closed.