Work Begins and initial lessons learnt!

1. After training for a couple of days in few Ad servers and the process, I was assigned the first task, QA of tickets. Just like ad trafficking, QA also requires good knowledge of ad servers. Impressions, Ad size, Ad targetting, Type of Ad, many more to know. It was a good experience that doing QA for each ticket was a challenge by itself. Getting an issue was not so easy, but there is always a chance of missing something, and unlike other software , you do not get a second chance to test it. Testing is only once and therefore it requires an eye for checking even the minutest detail. Different regions have different terms, for one region what looks like a jpeg ad would be a xml ad in another region. This was a simple point during training. But I learnt it the hard way during my first QA week. Since there was resource shortage, right from day one, there was no one to even check if my testing was proper. I still remember my first big flaw. It was 234x60 size ad , that was supposed to be a xml in APAC region, was displayed as a JPEG ad. Both trafficker and QA passed it and the ad ran as JPEG. First escalation mail, and still I remember the shiver that I had that day. The person who trained me was the one to handle it. He just smiled at me and said , that's ok, this is how you learn things. I still remember those words and his smile. It was he who gave me the confidence, and made me believe in myself. It was that day , that I realized being a QA is no ordinary job. Though a QA doesn't do things like ad trafficking or coding,he/she can greatly influence things and the buck stops with the QA!!