On this week’s episode of the #vodkast, Curt Highet, a seasoned professional in quality assurance (QA), shared his unique perspectives on QA, technical challenges, and even his passion for gardening. Here’s a summary of the key takeaways:

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Technical Challenges with Microsoft Products

01:22 Gardening: Attracting Hummingbirds and Bees

03:04 The Role of Quality Assurance in Software Development

05:09 Balancing Attention to Detail and Big Picture Thinking in QA

06:20 The Use of Offshore Testing Groups and Communication Challenges

08:25 Puppet Storytelling: A Creative Hobby

 

Takeaways

• Technical challenges with Microsoft products can impact businesses, but many companies were able to deal with the issues and maintain operational ability.
• Gardening can be a hobby that attracts wildlife like hummingbirds and bees by planting specific perennial flowers.
• Quality assurance (QA) requires attention to detail and a balance between big picture thinking and technical skills.
• Offshore testing groups can be effective for certain types of work, but communication challenges may arise due to time zone differences.
• Puppet storytelling can be a fun and creative hobby that engages children and adults alike.

 

 

Navigating Technical Challenges with QA Precision

Curt Highet kicked off the conversation discussing the recent global outage with Microsoft products that disrupted many operations. While Prime Therapeutics, where Curt works, wasn’t heavily impacted, other organizations faced connectivity issues, likely including pharmacies and hospitals.

Curt’s experience highlights the importance of having a robust QA strategy to handle unforeseen issues. His emphasis on attention to detail and proactive problem-solving resonates with many IT professionals. QA isn’t just about catching bugs; it’s about ensuring smooth, uninterrupted service even when technical challenges arise.

The Art and Science of QA in Software Development

My conversation with Curt on on quality assurance in software development provided valuable insights into the evolving nature of QA roles. With the rise of automation and AI, QA professionals are transitioning from traditional roles to more advanced quality engineering positions. While some QA tasks are increasingly technical, requiring coding and automation skills, the essence of QA—ensuring that all components work harmoniously together—remains unchanged.

The conversation also touched on the balance between big-picture thinking and meticulous detail. Effective QA requires both perspectives: understanding the overall system and ensuring each part functions correctly. This dual focus helps in creating robust and reliable software solutions.

Gardening: A Metaphor for Attention to Detail

Curt shared about his perennial garden that attracts bees and hummingbirds and butterflies. , drawing an analogy between his horticultural pursuits and his QA work. He elaborated on how attention to detail in gardening—like selecting the right plants to attract hummingbirds and bees—parallels the precision needed in QA. Just as he carefully chooses plants and manages their growth, QA professionals must meticulously test and validate every aspect of software to ensure it meets all requirements.

Curt’s approach to gardening, informed by both trial and error and professional advice, mirrors the iterative nature of QA. He emphasized that, much like in software testing, consistent maintenance and adjustments are key to successful gardening. This perspective offers a refreshing reminder of the parallels between seemingly unrelated fields and the universal principles of quality and attention to detail.

Balancing Offshore and Onshore QA

Our conversation continured on the dynamics of managing both local and offshore testing groups. At Prime Therapeutics, the balance between onshore and offshore teams is carefully managed to optimize efficiency and coverage. Curt explained that the decision to offshore certain tasks is based on a strategic assessment of what needs to be done and where it can be most effectively executed.

One significant challenge in offshore QA is the communication gap caused by time zone differences.His team addresses this by adjusting the balance of offshore and onshore resources based on project needs. This flexibility ensures that the team remains responsive and effective, even when coordinating across different time zones.

Puppets and Storytelling: Adding a Creative Touch

Before wrapping up, the conversation took a fun turn as Curt talked about his involvement in puppet storytelling. Inspired by the Muppets, he uses puppets to engage audiences, particularly children. His characters, Abel and Zabel, serve as a creative tool for storytelling, illustrating the diverse ways in which creativity can enhance professional and personal interactions.

The use puppet storytelling highlights the importance of creativity in all fields, including QA. Just as he uses puppets to bring stories to life, creativity in QA can lead to innovative solutions and more engaging ways to communicate complex concepts.

Conclusion: Tune In and Connect with Logisolve

Kelly’s conversation with Curt Highet provided a fascinating blend of technical insight and personal passion. From the evolving role of QA in software development to the creative use of puppets, Curt’s experiences offer valuable lessons for IT professionals.

To stay updated on more insightful discussions like this, be sure to subscribe to The Kelly Wendlandt Podcast. For those looking to dive deeper into quality assurance or explore how Logisolve can support your business, don’t hesitate to contact us. Join the conversation and keep pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in technology and beyond!

AI Generated Transcript

Kelly Wendlandt (00:00.49)
And We are live with Curt Hyatt. Curt, how are you this fine morning?

Curt Highet (00:05.655)
Very good, very good. Nice to have a relaxing weekend.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:08.802)
We were just talking before for the listeners got here. We were talking about how we had technical challenges with different Microsoft products. Who would ever think that after a global outing like that last Friday? What is it three days ago now that we might have some some difficulty with with our testing and product actually our products working together? Was it what did it impact?

Curt Highet (00:35.501)
Yeah, no kidding.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:38.434)
Did it impact you guys at prime therapeutics or

Curt Highet (00:41.283)
I do not believe it had impact on our business, but it for sure affected many of our, you know, like connecting to pharmacies and hospitals on that side, they were probably affected.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:53.486)
It sounded like from, you know, the general statements by Fortune 1000 kind of companies that almost every company was impacted at some level, but companies were pretty amazingly able to deal with it and get through the day with some amount of operational ability that allowed for it to be not overly painful, which is a credit to all of the hardworking people

technology operations and all the people, regular people on the job that were willing to dial in and be part of the solution to get the patches all where they needed to be. So makes for an exciting couple of days for everybody. Yeah. So I’m looking outside my window now and I have a wife who’s a fantastic gardener. I’ve got flowers all over the place and I’ve been told that you are also a gardener. Is that true?

Curt Highet (01:36.077)
for

It does, does for

Curt Highet (01:52.515)
Well, I guess I don’t know if I’m that big of a gardener. I like having perennial flowers that the hummingbirds and the butterflies and the bees enjoy. So I have a collection of many perennial different plants that attract them in and allow them to have something to feed on and pollinate from mid -May through the end of September. Just so different, you know, plants that have different blooming

periods of time that

Kelly Wendlandt (02:24.93)
And how did you figure out the right kind of plants to attract hummingbirds and bees? Was it a trial and error? you do research or how did you come up with the right plants?

Curt Highet (02:38.819)
Well, initially it was we went to the zoo and saw the butterfly garden, right? And said, I love the look of the flowers. And if it attracted butterflies, how do you do this? And then they said, talk to Bachman’s, which is a local florist here, and get advice from them. And sure enough, most of the plants you can go through, they tell you if it’s at what type of attractor it is. Some will even tell you this will.

not be appealing to rabbits and not be appealing to deer and things like that. So they’re well labeled if you go to professional nursery.

Kelly Wendlandt (03:15.374)
And you found it to be 80, 90 % accurate what they’re telling you and it’s worked

Curt Highet (03:22.147)
Absolutely, yeah. And then every year you just have to clean it up at the end of the year and then let it grow the next year.

Kelly Wendlandt (03:28.492)
And that’s the hand. That’s the hard part. That’s the hand weeding part. And what else is it hand weeding every pretty much every year throughout the year

Curt Highet (03:37.771)
throughout the summer you have to do that, Keep it back. And then in the fall, it’s just, you you have the dead stems and things that you have to clean

Kelly Wendlandt (03:48.12)
How’s it been for you this year? Has it been just an incredible rainforest -like growth?

Curt Highet (03:53.004)
it’s beautiful. Most, many of them want to spread even more than they already are. So actually in a way, cutting them back a little bit so that they don’t overlap and you get the full, you know, get the full bloom.

Kelly Wendlandt (04:05.132)
Yeah, do you think your QA background helps you with with picking flowers and with gardening? Your attention to detail. I mean, like when I notice QA people, I think of very attention to detail kind of people is that would you agree with that? Have you seen that in your career?

Curt Highet (04:12.195)
Uhhhh

Curt Highet (04:22.455)
I you know that’s one way I apply it. How about that? Yes, absolutely.

Kelly Wendlandt (04:27.532)
Yeah. Do you feel like the best QA people are high attention to detail people or are there some that are big picture and they apply that in a different way?

Curt Highet (04:40.771)
You know, you really need both. In my experience, having the big picture in mind, but then how do get to the details to actually perform that validation, right? So that you can look at the big end -end view, right? If in today’s world, there’s so many tools and capabilities for developers to self -test and build automation,

We want to enable them to do that and let the people that are more of the quality engineer type focus on the, so this basic set of code fits here in the picture, but it takes from here and feeds to there. Let’s make sure it still all works together so that the software engineer can focus on the part that they know best. And we focus more on the bigger picture.

There’s a real need for attention to detail about how do you actually make that work and work in such a way that it’s fast so that build deploys can happen over and over and over again during the course of a day, a week, a month.

Kelly Wendlandt (05:51.214)
Is testing and quality assurance getting more technical or less technical? You mentioned writing code or writing their own scripts. So AI is coming into some level of operations at most companies. Do you see it being more tech? Are people going to need to be more technical or less technical relying on AI over the next five or 10 years for testing?

Curt Highet (06:19.875)
More technical in my opinion. That’s why for my department we have been working on upskilling to be more of the quality engineer versus quality analyst type role. So we focus on the ability, even if you don’t necessarily automate, what’s the ability to automate this set of tests and validations? And how can we help the developers self -automate wherever possible?

Kelly Wendlandt (06:47.438)
And where does the business, making sure the business requirements part come into that? Because that, you know, like a lot of times the more technical someone is, the more focused they are on the bits and bytes in the code and they start to lose focus on, wait a second, the business objectives are these 30 things and we need to make sure that that’s rippling through whatever the end product is. How do you do

Curt Highet (07:15.041)
Well, there’s probably many techniques, but the primary source of where you get started of what should I consider to validate is those set of whether it’s stories or use cases or technical requirement design documents. It depends, right? The source of where you get that. You should be able to trace that to, this is what we need to validate, but then also look at what code changes are happening. this is what changed. And you can, using

techniques and tools. Wait a minute, we missed a whole requirement, or at least it appears we have, right, to ask the question. So you can then either say, we missed tying those two together, or yes, you’re right, we missed it entirely. So that’s where the QA part of it still needs to exist, right, is to make sure that we’re covering the bases of what’s required. And then, of course, how you implement it becomes quite technical.

Kelly Wendlandt (08:13.676)
You lead groups, so you have the testing background, but you’re really in a leadership role. And are you doing both local and offshore testing groups? Or what’s that like?

Curt Highet (08:25.227)
Yes, have, well, we have United States based people and Prime is fully remote. So let’s start with that. The company is fully remote. And so we have people across the United States, employee wise, we supplement with a strategic partner who has people also in multiple locations within the United States, Toronto, and over in India.

And so we try to balance the need and coverage based on what works happening. So things that can be done in India and not require interaction with the actual development team, those are done overnight and shipped to there. Things that require attention interactively with the development team, we do with the onshore mix.

Kelly Wendlandt (09:20.43)
And a lot of times people struggle with that 12 hour time difference because there’s almost no communication that goes on during that period. How do you address that challenge? Has it been effective for you in the QA group at Prime?

Curt Highet (09:38.371)
It has been, what I would say is, that is a result of the fact that we don’t force the 10 or 15 or maybe 20 % onshore and the rest offshore. What we do is we offshore what makes sense. And what that has led us to say is, for some periods of time, it’s been about 60 % offshore and some periods of time like now, it’s about 45 % offshore.

And it all has to do with what type of work are you facing at the time and the mix of skills that you need to deliver. So we have high, you know, the strategic partnership, part of the parameters requires high flexibility in terms of ramp up, ramp down, but also skill set, ramp up, ramp down.

Kelly Wendlandt (10:27.838)
Is the who makes the decision on what’s appropriate to go offshore? it actually people who are doing the work? Is it is it you? Is it a CIO or more of an executive level kind of decision

Curt Highet (10:41.217)
Well, we have the CIO and leadership team support for leveraging offshore wherever possible. So they encourage myself working in partnership with our development teams to say, hey, let’s look at what you have ahead of you. And this looks like this part of the work could be done offshore. How about we set ourselves up so we can do it that way and prove ourselves, prove that we can actually deliver.

and always be on the ready that, if it doesn’t work, how do you bring it back? And align. And like I say, that’s partially why we have some folks in Toronto is you still get a little bit of a price break, but you essentially get an overlap of hours in terms of service. So yeah, and every 10%, 15 % I’ll take.

Kelly Wendlandt (11:26.616)
Yeah, yep. It’s like

Right, I was just gonna say what is it? It’s like 10, 15 % or something price reduction. Have you looked at onshore US based models that are variable cost kind of models? like fixed bid, know, out work where you it’s a cost savings model, but it’s a different than the just having people on staff. Is that something you guys do or not?

Curt Highet (11:58.947)
There’s been some of that, yes, where the what do we need is well known and we can say, hey, we want you to deliver this for us. And by the way, when you come back, you have to give us the keys to the car you created for us so that we can carry it

Kelly Wendlandt (12:16.94)
Yeah, we’re seeing more of that I would say is that that model using local, which probably ties into what you’re talking about with Toronto. So, so before I let you go, we’re getting towards the end of our of our time, but I wanted to ask you about Able and Zable. I was thinking I might actually get to see them today. Are they around or is that not a do they only show they only show up on the weekends?

Curt Highet (12:33.389)
Ha ha

Curt Highet (12:37.987)
they, they, they show up on the weekends, but you know, I could always, bring up my chicken.

Kelly Wendlandt (12:47.63)
And so is that part of the stories that you tell and you’ll have these different puppets and do you have a cast of characters like

Curt Highet (12:50.263)
Just born, how fluffy.

Curt Highet (13:03.075)
I do have a cast of characters. There’s a few of them up on my shelf here in my office when I use the people puppets to interact. It’s very Muppet -esque.

Kelly Wendlandt (13:16.203)
You can see the Muppet, you can see the Muppet in some of those characters, our Muppet characters it looks

Curt Highet (13:21.815)
Yeah, well, yeah, they definitely look like it. They’re inspired by that for sure, yes. And Abel and Zabel are just the common where I start with the kids when I tell stories. And then I introduce the different characters based on if you need just that third or fourth person to perform.

Kelly Wendlandt (13:40.034)
I think we should have a separate podcast channel where we just do the puppets only and we tell stories. I think we’ll crush it on the internet.

Curt Highet (13:47.181)
Ha ha!

Well, why not? Why not?

Kelly Wendlandt (13:52.334)
Second careers for each of us. Curt Hyatt, thank you so much for your time. Great talking to you. For everyone else out there, you’re watching the Vodcast.

Curt Highet (13:57.635)
Thank