“Quality is not an act, it is a habit.” – Aristotle

The christmas day is almost near and i’m actually writing this blogpost, the day after we had our christmas party at Voyager Innovations Inc. But in my case, it’s my first christmas party in a corporate world.

And that has nothing to do with quality. But in the last few weeks, the whole team behind RaincheckPH is hard at work ensuring that the app will NOT just work, but the goal here is to ensure that the app has to be stable, information displayed are accurate and should delight the user when they use it.

It might be easy to say that, specially on a blogpost like this but it’s really not. Delivering high quality software is a matter of working harmoniously with different people who shares the same vision with the whole team. I’ve learned a lot since then and i would love to share you the lessons learned while doing Q.A at RaincheckPH.

Don’t settle for less, do what it is right.

Doing Q.A needs a lot of patience. I mean it A LOT. The task itself is repetitive, and you don’t end with just one try. If you think that there is something wrong, report it. Don’t assume that the user will not notice it because eventually, they will.

It’s easy to discuss the smallest things discovered by YOU, rather than discussing the fault with the team coming from the END USER. Because what you will ship today will be judged according to “stars” coming from different users all over the country – or even the whole world.

Be the first user, over and over again.

I’ve been testing RaincheckPH on my personal test devices. In my case, i have two Android phones with one running Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and one running Jelly Bean (4.1) and i can say that ever since i’ve been involved on this project, i’ve been carrying two phones. My BlackBerry Z10 and my Jelly Bean phone (that was actually intended for testing apps but ended up as my second phone).

Why?

Because i wanted to “Feel” that i am the user, even if i am aware of what to do from the first place. I always wanted to experience that amazing feeling of excitement and curiosity, the way a user feels when he downloaded a new app. And i always wanted to feel that way over and over again when testing a certain app.

Be inspired

My inspiration would be the future. It may sounds funny, but think about it. You are working on app that will touch the lives of a million user. Who knows? It may change the way they look at technology. It may change their lifestyle. The way they navigate from day to day – and it all starts with YOU.

There are other ways to get inspired. But it’s only you who will discover it.

And lastly,

Enjoy

Because being inspired alone will not work. Because in reality, what you enjoy today will be your hobby tomorrow.

I hope you learned something new today! Go ship great apps and change the world!