Field Note · 2024
What I Stole from Atlassian 🥷
There were a lot of Atlassian processes that, as a more junior developer, I appreciated and thought would be worth using again… so here’s a list of them.
QA Kickoff
A QA Kickoff is when a developer first picks up a ticket and wants to discuss their approach with the rest of the team. It’s a chance to talk through anything that could be a potential hurdle, how you might test it, and how you want to implement the change. The team can then offer constructive criticism and suggestions for things that might work better.
Atlassian guidance was that a ticket needs a QA Kickoff if you answer “yes” to any of: does this affect the app UI/UX? does this affect the data layer? might there be regressions? We were fairly lax about kickoffs, but they were encouraged and useful for gaining context in unfamiliar areas. For a junior dev who hasn’t seen a problem before, it’s a great way to steer them toward a good approach — and explain why it’s the best option — rather than just handing them instructions on a ticket.
QA Demo
After a feature is built, it gets demoed to the wider team before it goes up for pull request or merge. This helps catch anything missed from the agreed scope, and surfaces things that weren’t accounted for in the initial QA Kickoff.
Still in the notebook
There are a few more I’m still writing up — Continuous Retro, Quality Cards, PR Automations and Pair Programming. More on each of these soon.