Tech Talks With Lina Zubyte

The ever-evolving and ever-changing tech landscape requires effective access to quality assurance. Especially, when most modern-day industries are trying to take maximum advantage of advanced technologies, effective and timely testing is vital to drive the true potential of technology in operations.  

However, working on advanced tech requires access to knowledge that can transform the digital landscape. And therefore, BugRaptors always aim to explore different perspectives by interacting with QA professionals from across the globe. Sticking to the tradition, this time, our in-house expert, Kanika Vatsyayan, VP, Delivery & Operations interacted with Lina Zubyte, Head of Quality at Doodle AG. 

With an experience of more than 9 years in the industry, Lina started her journey as a research assistant, making her way to Head of Quality. She is highly enthusiastic and positive about the impact that Quality Assurance could create on the technologies of the future. And therefore, she has a keen knowledge of all the crucial and fundamental aspects of changing QA landscape.  

During the interview, Lina shared everything related to her career journey and discussed in detail the myths surrounding the QA industry. Apart from this, Lina openly talked about the necessary QA concerns related to rapidly changing requirements of SDLC while sharing insights on handling them.  

With all that briefing of the interactive session between the two experts, let us quickly jump on the interview and explore what new it has to deliver.  

Kanika: Did you always want to be a Quality Analyst? 

Lina: No, I didn't even know what a quality analyst is for quite a long time! I stumbled into this profession when I attended a career fair at university. One of the companies had a challenge with logical puzzles to solve full of thinking outside-the-box tasks. I loved it! I studied mathematics and have always had an interest in all kinds of puzzles. It turned out that this task was for a job of a quality analyst. That sparked my interest and I ended up trying the field out as a result.  

Kanika: What has been the most influential resource for your career? 

Lina: Pairing with other colleagues! There's no book or a course that has taught me as much as simply working together with others. Especially different roles than mine. I learned so much collaborating with product owners, developers, or even sales representatives! They helped me expand my views on quality and how broad it actually is.  

Kanika: What are some of the common myths about quality assurance? 

Lina: The most common myth I hear is that QA slows down development teams. It took me years to challenge that and realize that a good QA actually accelerates development efforts! Testing is so hard and doing it in a skillful way as early as possible can help us prevent a lot of issues which in the end provide good confidence and make us so much faster.  

Kanika: How do you decide when you have tested enough? 

Lina: I believe in the Pareto principle: the 80/20 rule. The 20% (core) of functionality of any product covers around 80% of main scenarios and flows. It's important for us to test the main functionality really well and evaluate our trade-offs based on the time we get assigned to the task. It's an important conversation with product/business stakeholders on which risks we can accept and which not.  

Kanika: What approach do you follow when requirements change continuously? 

Lina: I am a strong proponent for QAs to be involved as early as possible. This means that we would even pair with product requirement writers to cover any edge cases or unexpected scenarios. In this case, the stories that reach the team have concise requirements that should not be changing. Definition of Ready can also help to reach this state (I have written about it on my blog: https://qualitybits.tech/writing/definition-of-ready). In the rare case where requirements do change, I'd recommend raising it in retrospective and analyzing the cause of this rework. As this was a process bottleneck, the team should address it and learn on how not to repeat it.  

Kanika: Any remarks you want to share with the tester community of India? 

Lina: Each of us brings something unique and authentic to our job, and I'd encourage you to use your interests: be it monitoring, or automation, or exploratory mindset, or even coaching or agile process awareness: the team can benefit from your knowledge. There's not just one recipe of what a QA is. It's a magical role to be in because you can choose your strength areas.  

Kanika: Where can people learn more about you? 

Lina: I am sharing my thoughts on quality on my website: https://qualitybits.tech.  

There you can also check out my Quality Foundations series (https://qualitybits.tech/writing/quality-foundations/) in which I'm combining my knowledge for anyone just starting in the QA field.  

Also, I am on twitter as @buggylina. 

At BugRaptors, we aim to achieve the extraordinary by redefining the tech landscape through Quality Assurance solutions. Also, we believe that quality communication is the key to great innovations.  

If you think you have a unique perspective to offer to the QA landscape or you need to discuss QA with respect to some other industry, feel free to reach us through info@bugraptors.com