Roles & Responsibilities in a Software testing team – testomat.io

Testing team plays an essential role in defining the success of a particular software product. Team composition specifies in different ways – in many companies and even in each project. The same regarding organizational structure. Software testing role distribution depends on the project’s specific as well as testing budget. But along with this – team location, knowledge, skills and practical experience in software testing. Leading elements that influence may change over time.

Given the above, the testing team possible consist of one single general QA engineer or many QA professionals who perform different software testers’ tasks and have various responsibilities within particular skills. They all work together to achieve the overall objective of the test project.

On the other hand, quality is the responsibility of each project participant not only testing team members. All stakeholders should be interested in a quality product, including – the Development team (Devs), Project management team (PM, PO), and team responsible for gathering, processing and testing requirements.

One full-stack software test engineer or, in other words, general software tester cannot test big products alone because it is very resource-consuming. Also, full-stack testers are inferior to niche QA engineers when causing the need for highly specialized knowledge.

However, the role of general QA engineers is quite in demand in the worldwide software testers professionals market.

Ideal size for QA team

The ideal size depends on… but what? Topic of how many members are in a QA team is old. Follow the link to meet the top answers on StackExchange. The organizer of this discussion complained that with the growth of his team, overall team productivity was down. So, he asked for advice. There detected clarifications of at least 3 test engineers and up to 10-12 for high-scaled projects. But all participants agreed that there is no universal formula for an effective QA team, especially an Agile testing team.

Normally, the following members compose a software testing team ⬇️ 👉 Let’s briefly look at their roles and job responsibilities in the testing process!

Popular Software testing Roles & Responsibilities

Quality Control Engineer (QC)                        

The term comes from the manufacturing industry. QC in the software industry is responsible for testing new products and determining whether those products meet business requirements in reliability and functionality. Implements the test program established by QA procedures, testing efforts are concentrated on finding defects.

Quality Assurance Engineer (QA)
Determines test procedures that can enable to test of a particular software app in the beat particular manner. Designing test suites, create test cases and test documentation. Executes all levels of testing. Run tests according to the test standards within various testing techniques. Analyzes and reports test results. To help troubleshoot errors, before the product will be pushed into production.

Test Analyst
Focuses on the business problem. Should have the ability to see the big picture, good planning and organizational skills. Analyzes requirements and acceptance criteria, designes software testing documentation including test plans, links tests to req, run tests, analyzes and documents results.

Test Consultant
Involved in all (SDLC) phases of an IT project where they can improve all needed aspects of software development. They ought to be interested in the current trend in software development (including Agile and DevOps). Should own an analytical mindset and of course excellent communication skills.

Test Automation Engineer (AQA)
Primarily is focused on coding test framework and then quality. Set up a

test environment, and d

evelops test scripts using the testing tools like Selenium, Codecept or others to design and run automated test cases.

Test Architect
Works with the project infrastructure, prepares test strategy and implements test automation tools to support product code and test code. Sometimes performs low-level testing like unit testing, module testing, performance testing, acceptance testing. Should have strong knowledge of backend services.

Test Manager
QA manager acts a little like a project manager. Design test strategy, organize test processes, track test progress and supervises the teamwork through test planning.

Director of test
One senior manager who manages Test managers. Should set QA strategy and approach for all the company`s products and be ultimately responsible for quality. Guarantee the success of manual and automation testing efforts of all testing teams in the organization.

Moreover, many modern Agile QA teams are even more diverse. There may be several QA engineers, Test Analysts, Requirement Analysts, Test Architects, Test Managers, QA Team Lead and other QA roles. Sometimes they divide their authority and responsibilities with each other.

Tiny teams don’t always have test automation engineers. So, the role is a hired Automation QA consultant. The exact same Performance testers (carry load and stress tests), Security QA, Network test engineer, DevOps, Usability software tester, Accessibility test professional, Scrum master, release manager etc.

A manual QA engineer, except execution of manual testing, can partially or completely perform the role of a QA analyst or QA coordinator. QA coordinator alternatively plays the Project manager role in the project.

The demand for the QA architect and DevOps is more noticeable in big companies with complex infrastructures.

The outsourcing QA teams can balance business requirements, testing and delivery in several projects, what’s much more tricky!

Nevertheless, test team members must know what is expected of each of them. They should know their role and responsibilities, clearly understand who is in charge and what expect from their team.

What do you think about these titles?

• Principal QA Engineer
• VP Engineer
• Transformation manager
• Managing Director
• Engineering Manager

Let’s dive in briefly into these job descriptions!

Pay attention to the most valued opinions as answers to our open discussion:

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Who participates in Quality Assurance Team Building

Building and managing a high-performance Agile test team that provides business value to the organization is one of the most complicated tasks in test management. Besides, the QA manager, as well HR manager, talent equitation manager, CEO and CTO  participate in team organization. They are reviewing candidates in terms of their duties.

In order to create a capable testing team, they outline the software testing team structure, might assign software testing team responsibilities, and define software testing team objectives. The primary goal is to keep the project on track.

The essence of the Agile Software testing team

One more time saying, TEAM – Together Everyone Achieves More. This means Agile at first, is a team-orientated approach as well as a customer-orientated approach.

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan.

And the next 12 Agile principles are:

1. Satisfying customers through early and continuous delivery of valuable work.
2. Breaking big work down into smaller tasks that can be completed quickly.
3. Recognizing that the best work emerges from self-organized teams.
4. Providing motivated individuals with the environment and support they need and trusting them to get the job done.
5. Creating processes that promote sustainable efforts.
6. Maintaining a constant pace for completed work.
7. Welcoming changing requirements, even late in a project.
8. Assembling the project team and business owners on a daily basis throughout the project.
9. Having the team reflect at regular intervals on how to become more effective, then tuning and adjusting behavior accordingly.
10. Measuring progress by the amount of completed work.
11. Continually seeking excellence.
12. Harnessing change for a competitive advantage.

In Agile SDLC, testing starts in the early stages of software development, so development and testing processes are simultaneous. And as a result, testers are closely integrated into each stage of the Agile Software Development Life Cycle.

QA Engineers’ involvement helps to optimize the risks and create alignment. They create all possible test scenarios. QA test analyst check the business requirements for inconsistencies or logical gaps in functionality. Test team closely interact with Dev team and customer, being a kind of bridge between them.

QAs check all of the product features by the way of finding and reporting bugs and estimating overall product quality. Testers have the power to approve software for release or send code to rework. The decision depends on the number of critical bugs.

After the release, the testing team repeats the stages mentioned above over and over again during the product life cycle. They check new features, find new bugs during regular software inspection, and analyze bugs reported by users.

Factors influencing QA team performance:

• effective communication
• engagement
• strong collaboration on a daily basis.
• knowledge transfering

These traits are essential in synergy testing efforts that influence on the end product quality.

Sharing of experience, mentoring, coaching, training and team building are also important in growing effectiveness within an Agile testing team.

Motivating the testing team

Guru99 abstract: teamwork without motivation look like a body without a soul. If you have a motivated team, be sure this QA team will improve your project quality and productivity at times.

Let’s talk…

🤗 Please, share your opinion:

• What career path for Software testing professionals did you choose?
• What testing team roles and responsibilities are in your team?
• What are your QA job title and responsibilities?

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