Mika Green’s days on the Unqork QA team are filled with strategies, matcha, and music. Get a glimpse into what it’s like to be a QA analyst at Unqork!
As a part of the quality assurance (QA) team at Unqork, Mika Green is tasked with ensuring the quality of our platform along with all the applications built on it. This involves helping companies scale up, managing communication between teams, and making sure every feature is functioning at its best and driving value for the enterprise.
Every day, Mika blends together strategy, creativity, and automation to create rigorous testing regimens—and sometimes they blend together a smoothie as well. See what else Mika, a QA Analyst at Unqork, gets up to on the daily:
Spotify Playlist: POLLEN
6:30 AM: My alarm wakes me up! I’ve got it set up to play a random song each morning. Today, it’s Time Capsule by Kaidi & NK-OK & Blue Lab Beats. I like to let the songs play a bit before I get out of bed.
6:45 AM: Tea time! More specifically, matcha time. Matcha is a Japanese green tea fine powder made from dried tea leaves—it has a slightly bitter, vegetal taste and a vibrant green color. I love making matcha—I enjoy the process and the bamboo utensils, which is a whisk called a Chasen.
First, I grab a tea ladle and get 2-3 scoops of matcha powder, sifting it into a small bowl so it doesn’t clump together. Then, I pour small amounts of hot water in at a time and whisk until a creamy foamy layer forms on top. Finally, I add more hot water or milk depending on how I’m feeling, and enjoy!
7:00-8:00 AM: I love having all this extra time before I begin working. I use this time to ease into my day—I hate just jumping into work! During this hour I enjoy playing video games, listening to audiobooks, or watching Youtube videos. Today I watch a Youtube video on Why No One Has Measured The Speed Of Light from the channel Veritasium. I don’t always understand all the terminology, but learning about space is something I’ve always found exciting.
8:00 AM: Time to review my calendar for the day, plus check my emails and any Slack notifications. Once that’s done, it’s time to head over to the #music Slack channel, which is definitely my favorite Unqork channel!
Spotify Playlist: Lo Fi | Hip-Hop
9:00 AM: Meeting time! There will be a 15- to 30-minute meeting for each project I’m working on with testers provided by our SI partners, manual and automated. During these meetings, we discuss any roadblocks and how we can resolve them.
10:00 AM: After QA has given all updates, it’s time to meet with the Engagement Manager. QA syncs—which we call touchpoints—can be critical depending on how far along the project is already. Including QA from the start allows us to continue growing our testing suites with the application as we test in parallel with the config team.
12:00 PM: Lunchtime, which today is smoothie time! It’s hot outside so today we have a (hear me out!) mixed-berry, spinach, and peanut butter smoothie. To feel fuller for the remainder of the day, I add flax seeds and hemp protein or oats. I don’t always have a healthy lunch, but since the weather’s hot it’s important to eat healthy in order to keep my energy up and stay agile. Then, it’s time to play a game—today I’m playing Monster Hunter Rise on the Nintendo Switch.
1:00 PM: Review time! I have a couple of projects that are currently in their automation phase of testing. Automated testing allows us to run tests on developing applications and report on the results. Unqork’s innovative testing handles many of the repetitive, time-consuming tasks previously carried out by manual testers. As an application is created, it’s our responsibility to suggest any user flows or features that would be great candidates for automation.
As those tests are created and promoted to the project’s repository (or “repo” for short, which is a storage location for our test suite), I review the test scripts to ensure the automation tester is utilizing our Unqork best practices. Then, I analyze the pipeline results. A pipeline is an integrated CI/CD service built into Bitbucket, which allows us to automatically build and run our test.
There are a few factors that go into pipeline configuration, but I would say the most important is to understand the YAML file. A pipeline is defined using a YAML file called bitbucket-pipelines.yml, which is located at the root of the repo. A pipe is a single way to configure a pipeline using a script that lives in a Docker container and contains the commands you previously put in your YAML.
2:00 PM: Chocolatey time! Chocolatey is Unqork’s BIPOC ERSG, and our monthly meetings are always a great opportunity to catch up with fellow Unqorkers, learn about current events, or treat it as a Brave Space for people to talk through any thoughts or ideas. Chocolatey was one of the first ERSGs I joined when I started at Unqork, but not the only one. Being a part of these groups is a constantly enjoyable experience, as people share everything from differing world views to food photos. It’s truly made my Unqork experience enchanting!
3:00 PM: 1:1 time! As Unqork grows, so do our roles and responsibilities as well as our knowledge base. I do my best to meet with anyone on my team or in the company that can share helpful information with me, so I can better understand the platform and increase my QA knowledge.
I also have a 30-45 minute 1:1 with my direct supervisor. It’s always a great time—we work through any project blockers I may have, and we discuss my work-life balance. We mainly communicate through Slack otherwise, so these 1:1s are nice as they are more cordial.
Spotify Playlist: Alternative Hip Hop
3:30 PM: Config time! The QA team has made a point to send anyone who wants to attend through the Unqork Bootcamp. This spawned Unqork For QA, which is where we work toward building and maintaining tools that streamline QA project documentation, testing practices, project management, and test results. We are currently building a tool that will hopefully allow us to better organize our test results.
6:00 PM: Time’s up! The workday is over for me. I review my calendar and share out any meeting notes before I’m done.
Spotify Playlist: DnD Background Music
6:30 PM: Adventure Time! It’s time for Unqork: Dungeons and Dragons. We just started “The Rise of Tiamat” and we’re on our way to encountering an adult White Dragon, so things are getting exciting! We’re always looking for new people—any Unqorkers reading this are free to join the #dnd channel to speculate or join the gang.
To hear more perspectives from other Unqorkers, check out the other entries in our Unqork @ Work series and Creator Spotlights.
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