There comes a point in every project where the team enters a fun little time called Quality Assurance. One may think that such a process could be frustrating, especially when conducting a QA across multiple satellite offices, but I have found the solution! Bullet points and screen grabs! No joke. These two simple steps make conducting a successful QA via email a cinch!

Bullet Points are helpful because you can separate out your steps, clearly showing the developers where one thought ends and the next begins! How novel. I’ve also found its helpful to include a bit of background about what you were doing when you ran into your bug or error (browser type, previous steps, what you were trying to accomplish, etc).

Screen grabs are equally as wonderful because you can visually display what went wrong. Rather than saying “something’s looking weird” and following it with an incoherent explanation of what you see on your screen, you can simply say “something’s looking weird” and drop a screen grab of the error you encountered right into the email. Now the developer doesn’t have to decipher your rambling, descriptive paragraph – they can just SEE it.

Follow this simple steps and the QA process will be simpler for all parties involved. You’ll be happy because you won’t receive emails back from the dev team asking you to clarify points of your email, and the dev team will be happy because they won’t have to guess what you were trying to explain. Do a really succinct job, and someone on the dev team may just send you a fancy blue ribbon… similar to this one I received from Mr. Adam Miller and proceeded to print, cut out, and proudly display on my monitor. Blue ribbons all around!