Kiran Tariq is one of Computan’s Ace QC Engineers. She has a gift for finding faults in things and pointing them out. That definitely makes her extremely good at her job. But does it get her into trouble? In this installment of Behind The Coding Kiran talks about the perfect partnership between development and QC, she carefully planned weekend adventures and her escapes from school.
Hi Kiran! What are the last 3 things you Googled?'
Iftar time (time for breaking fast)
Yes! Ramadan is coming and no food from sunrise to sunset. What will you be eating?
Yes, it is! we are really looking forward to it at the house. We’ll break out fast with deep-fried pakoras (deep-friend green chilies and onions) and samosas (vegetables and minced meats stuffed in a deep-fried pyramid crust).
Oh wow. Those sound good. Are they homemade?
Some are homemade yes and others are bought frozen. With work, it’s tough to do everything from scratch!
Of course! What else have you been Googling?
Playdium Mall Games
What kind of games do they have?
At Playdium mall they have great games. Electric car racing and rides. I am planning on a weekend excursion. I love my weekends and plan adventures every weekend!
What kind of adventures do you do?
Anything and everything! Sometimes I plan outdoor things to do. Visit, mosques, churches, templates, go to country clubs, shopping mall rides.
Do you do these trips alone?
Usually, I go with my family. My husband, brother, and parents too. I love to plan with them!
I could see you being organized and planning excursions like this.
Definitely.
What else did you Google?
World Time Buddy – my favorite tool to convert time zones for conference calls.
Hahahaha! That tool is a Computan favorite.
'When was the last time you worked after hours to solve a hard problem?'
Probably a week or two ago actually! We are doing a current project for one of our agency clients. I call it Project OMG. It is a custom WordPress frontend and backend build.
Yes, I know what you are referring to. Why are you working late on it though?
Actually, it looks like the project is needed in a really short period of time. Our client asked to send work without running it through Quality Control (QC). This means I didn’t get a chance to look at a lot of the work that we did. Our reliable development ad QC process was broken.
So what happened?
Well, long story short the client saw plenty of bugs that we would have found in QC. So our Project Manager and Team lead advised the client that we would bring our QC team back into the work to ensure proper quality. That meant I needed to catch up and get up to speed quickly and a few long nights and a totally lost weekend!
You have had some pretty interesting projects to QC since joining Computan. Is there any interesting thing you remember about your journey with Computan so far?
I remember that I joined Computan while I was in the middle of wedding planning.
Yes! That’s right
I got the job here a week before my wedding. So a lot of huge changes happening all at once.
Definitely. What made that situation even more unique?
Well, not only was I new to Computan I was also involved in customer-facing work. So there was kind of this ‘Hi! I’m Kiran nice to meet you. I’m going to be out of the office for 7 days to get married.’ The clients were confused about why I needed 7 days to get married!
Why did you need 7 days to get married?
In our culture, weddings are a big deal. Especially for the bride. There are dinner parties, 3 or 4 formal celebrations with many family and friends attending. And of course, they are a lot of fun. In this client’s culture usually, weddings were small, quiet affairs and only lasted a few hours.
That puts you in an interesting spot!
Yes! But they were fantastic as were my teammates at Computan. I feel very lucky to be here.
Do you care to elaborate on that?
There are a lot of things I love about Computan. For one, at the time I joined I was the only female on the engineering team.
Yes! That’s right? And you love that?
Well, I didn’t love that I was the only female on the engineering team at the time obviously! But no colleagues, clients, managers, or whoever made me feel like an outsider of any kind at all. They made me feel like a family.
That is great to hear Kiran!
Yes. This is a really special place. I think most of the time people don’t leave our team. And when there is some change in the team it’s usually because someone has left. We never really give up on people here. I really like that.
Wow! This is really fantastic hear Kiran and yes you are right. Who are 3 people you'd like to have dinner with at the same time and why
I would invite 3 friends that I haven’t seen in 10 years. Nisha, Sophia, and Kainat.
What makes Nisha, Sophia, and Kainat special?
We went to elementary school together. Actually, they helped me sneak out of school a few times.
Wait, you snuck out of school?
Didn’t you? Doesn’t everyone?
I mean, I’m not going to respond about my own school escapes. That’s private information! But how did your friends help you?
They would put bags on a table to that I could climb to escape out the back door. I would run home to go see my mom. They would always help me.
They are accomplices to a student escaping school!
We had great fun and I really miss them. I switched schools and lost touch.
What would you guys eat?
We would eat at Bundoo Khan. I would get them BBQ and fried fish.
When was the last time you cried tears of laughter?
Not too long ago! I was in Nathia Gali and the ground was soft because it had rained. I climbed up a slippery slope and fell into muddy water. I laughed so hard and many people around were laughing too. Should have been embarrassing but it was quite hilarious.
What do you love about coding?
I marvel at the magic of development. The ability to make something out of nothing.
You have a big part in that too as a QC engineer. What is the Definition of a supportive Developer in the eye of QA?
A lot of developers haven’t worked with QC engineers. Those developers get frustrated when we find bugs in regression testing. When we find bugs in a second review that we missed in a first review, or when applying a fix in one place it causes a break in something else.
Ah yes for sure.
Developers should be supportive when bugs are found in regression. That’s the key to the perfect partnership between developers and QC.
Where were you when you first saw a laptop/desktop? What games to play?
I was 12 and it was a desktop. My brother brought it for his own work. In terms of games? I played Grand Theft Auto and Tekken 3. Even now I play Grand Theft Auto!
What is something your teammates don't know about you?
They don’t know about my sense of humor! They think I’m pretty reserved but really I’m not.
Anything else?
Nope… I’m not going to share it now if I haven’t shared it yet 😊.
