Many factors contribute to happiness in the workplace. But when your workplace is your home, and your boundaries are blurred, these factors might seem irrelevant. But it is not. Especially now when you might have met your delivery boy way more than your office team member because of the pandemic.
In this blog, I will jot down a few easy steps that will help you understand your emotional intelligence and get to know your co-workers which will help you to build a lasting professional relationship with your unforeseen colleague which will increase your productivity and overall job satisfaction.
1. Trust each other. The animosity between developers and testers is unwise and unhealthy if your goal is to have a product free of errors.
Even though you have not met each other you should try to know each other better at every given opportunity. Be it official or casual calls bonding with colleagues over common interests helps build trust.
2. Communication done properly will make the project faster. Be it questions on test data, functionalities, expected results, or issues about bug reports; all need to be communicated neutrally and objectively by the tester and not be taken as a personal attack by the developer.
a. Test! Test! Test!: Emphasize testing as early as the requirement collection phase. If the tester communicates with the developer on how he plans to test the product, it will help the developer.
b. Update each other: Communication lines between the tester and developer need to be open throughout the testing process employing collaborative tools like SLACK, etc to keep in line with the end goal.
3. Mutual Respect is a key component of a successful workplace relationship. When developers respect their QA colleagues, they can rest assured that their work is being analyzed in the most non-judgmental way.
And testers should not shy away from appreciating or providing positive feedback to the developers when they efficiently fix the bug in a minimal time frame.
Being able to empathize with our colleagues in periods of stress by showing kindness can make the workplace happier.
4. Conflict Management is significantly associated with relationship satisfaction. No relationship is smooth sailing all the time. If the QA tester reports a bug and the developer thinks otherwise, then such conflicts should be given to project/product managers to get clarity!
To conclude, one can make a difference, two can make a change. So knock down the barriers, trust, talk, and appreciate each other.
