Vend to Integrate!!!!!

It was Holi, I still remember that how colorful it was made by Verinite by a simple call and saying “Hello, Congratulations! Yogesh, you are selected”. I had been being under impression that I was selected as I have sufficient knowledge on how to test the system and gave each answer with required confidence in personal interview but it’s not like that and it took almost 3 years to understand the expectations of interview panel behind selecting me and do you know what it is? – It was to “Get integrated and to integrate”, I am sure that you must be thinking that what He is saying??? I will make it clear – so relax and hear me out…

Client Integration:

I was working for one of the client from offshore and to deliver their projects, our team almost worked 30 days in a month. On one of the Monday, we received the email “Please stop working on it and this one is scraped”, client saying. I left it in email and started working on next assigned one. I had almost forgotten about first one as focus completely shifted on the second one. Again on one of the morning what I can see that second one is also scrapped. Now I was under frustration and thinking that I have given my more than 100 percent and our work is getting appreciated then how project can be scrapped. I was worried and expecting bashing from my lead. Nothing happens, we started on next one and delivered it. Also I was happy that for first 2 scraps, we are not responsible and I was not concerned too to understand why was it scraped? Not being concerned was my 1st mistake and it does not allow to “Integrate with client” and “integrate clients with their customers”. Being a good tester we should always keep testing this integration and fix same if any observation.

Team Integration:

Then I worked for couple of projects, I was awarded for my work and this helped me remain focused but only on my individual goals. Being focused only on individual goals, leaves others behind and we lose our hand shake within team, and that’s what exactly happened here. I lost my integration within team and I was not able to conjoin, it could be because of lack of experience or not able to understand what it needs. But when you really want to do it then it happens.

Realization of “To integrate and get integrated”:

I was there at my desk in our India office and while reading some document for next assignment (my first onsite assignment), I was asked a question by our Founder (Ashish Katkar) – when do you think our client will be happy? He knew that I would not be able to answer, he smiled and left but I did not leave his question. I carried it at onsite and started looking for an answer.

At onsite, I worked on multiple projects and did different testing projects like functional, compatibility and API integration. I received my first big project, where customer was frustrated as the core feature of the product was not working as expected and this project was initiated to fix the problem and improve customer experience. This was my opportunity to integrate client and their customer by understanding what my client and their customer’s expectation are from the product. Our team understood client’s different customers, existing business requirement and put multiple improvements on table to connect to the actual customer. As part of testing, we simulated each customer experience in test environment to make sure customer will have happy experience. It was like putting our hands on top of our customer’s hand to give him comfort and deliver 100% full proof product in market.

We faced multiple challenges after that and we made sure client is fully integrated with their customers. I would like to quote one of the unpleasant experience as it gave us opportunity to prove that we are known for what we vend. Client wanted to deliver one prepaid product site without having any project documentation. Site was already developed and development team did it by understanding based on multiple round of discussion with business team. But there was no design document or a functional specification document. Challenges arose when project got into testing stage and as soon as we were assigned, we did think what can we do now. We did apply our strategy suggested by our delivery head (Debasis Mohanty) – for now I will keep strategy is secret as you can bring project to us without any doc to understand same but what you would like to hear is that “Site is live today and functionally and operationally running successfully”.

I was alone at onsite and team was there at offshore, it explains our quality that made it possible to deliver such documentation less project. Important thing is that I have an answer of Ashish’s question – Becoming conjoiner makes client happy!!!