People of Symphony starring Nikola Orozovic: Building the Bridge between Development and Client

It is time to introduce Nikola Orozovic, a Principal QA Engineer from Symphony Novi Sad. Coming from a Civil engineering background, Nikola discovered his passion for testing back in 2015, when he first set sail in QA waters. Besides his endless fascination with technology and savviness in Manual and Automation Testing, what set him apart when first joining Symphony were his people skills and experience with clients from different industries and backgrounds. After almost four years in Symphony, Nikola shares his QA journey, and all the valuable lessons he learned along the way.

Finding Your Niche

When first starting his career in IT, Nikola made a decision to take a risk and use his prior knowledge in development to start carving out a strong foundation in QA. Before coming to Symphony, he had an excellent mentor who recognized his affinities, and pushed him in the right direction. At first, Nikola tackled different aspects of the development process, from frontend to backend, as he slowly started with Manual and Automation Testing. This gave him the space to identify what suits him best on his career path. He was among the first to join Symphony Novi Sad, and he loves to say how his curiosity and dedication to the company always evolved around one word - challenge. As Symphony grew, new inspiring people joined, but one thing remained constant - the level of challenge and the quality of projects that kept him excited to come to work every day.

Nikola has been a QA on a big project at Symphony since the very beginning, setting up the baseline, team, and processes. In his own words - “Developing something from the ground up has been a huge learning experience that keeps on giving me so much. The evolution of the product is what keeps your agility in check and drives tangible growth. The nature of the project is such that it consists of a number of smaller-scale projects that go into production. This is crucial for keeping the team morale high - knowing that end-users will benefit from something you worked on and developed together. This project undoubtedly built my confidence and each milestone we celebrated together as a team, gave me the push to work even harder and smarter.”

Anatomy of a QA Role

Let’s start with the burning question - What makes a good QA Engineer?  Nikola got into the details - “A QA Engineer is the watchful eye that detects bugs in the early stage, maintains the high level of quality of the application at all times while being in constant communication with the rest of the team. For a QA, it is paramount to see a product evolve in all its phases in order to scale and determine the order in which bugs need to be fixed. The main task is to keep a smooth experience for the end-user, and for the app to behave in complete sync with the specifications.”

It is important to mention the two main driving forces of team success in Nikola’s opinion - our output and processes. “What ultimately gained our client’s trust are the consistency in our output and establishing the right processes. Our next steps are to further solidify these processes at the hub level, and cultivate the quality of the whole team and product.

A QA is a kind of a safety net for the rest of the team, making decisions and maintaining the full trust of every team member. It is someone that is versatile and detail-oriented, with a never-ending thirst for knowledge, and improvement of processes. Nikola pointed out that - “A good QA has a holistic approach and knowledge in many different fields, from development, communication skills, and codebase to DevOps processes, and setting up a pipeline. They are ultimately a bridge between the development team and client, maintaining a steady stream of communication with both sides.”

The Analytical Mind

Every beginning brings its own obstacles and challenges, but the excitement of building something from scratch is an experience that cannot be matched. Nikola believes that laying out a solid foundation and processes is the most crucial part of any project, and for a QA, the most exhilarating one too. When it comes to the future , his opinion is that QA will be much closer to development. This would allow greater control on testing, and detecting bugs right after code implementation. Ultimately, the product is created for the end-user which is why the user-centric frontend is equally important as a good backend.

After almost seven years in the industry, nourishing the analytical QA mind is what constantly inspires Nikola to move forward. Symphony recognized his drive, supporting his path to expanding skills and knowledge, and encouraging him to choose the direction he wanted to move in professionally. As he concluded - “Our biggest sources of knowledge are new beginnings and learning new technologies. The reward of taking that leap into the unknown is much greater than the risk taken.”