QA Role in Software Outsourcing Industry

Quality Assurance is the process of assuring the quality of a product before it is released for public access. The main thing to remember is that QA Engineer is not just involved directly in the testing of applications. But they also focus on certain processes to ensure the best outcome. 

QA checks all the interaction between different pieces of code and environments which are not part of the program that they have built themselves. In the process of testing, they put themselves in the shoes of a user for whom the product is being created to. 

Testing at the right time minimizes the cost and time to rework and also helps to create error-free software to be delivered to the client. In most software outsourcing companies; the role of QA always starts right from the beginning when requirements are gathered and continues till the maintenance phase of the software development life cycle.  

What is Agile?

Agile is a methodology where software development processes occur in iterative and incremental ways. In this process of software development life cycle, there is constant feedback that allows team members to adjust to the challenges as they arise and also provides an opportunity to communicate consistently with the stakeholders. 

If a project does not have clear constraints, timeline or available resources then it’s good to use agile methodology. 

Popular agile methodology includes: 

● Scrum 

● Kanban 

● Scrumban 

● Agile-Waterfall/Hybrid agile 

4 Important Role of QA in Agile Process

 The QA process in Agile is focused on integration, teamwork, and quick feedback. The team can be proactive and reactive when QA is active throughout. Basically, in traditional techniques like the waterfall model, QA is frequently a separate task or procedure that doesn’t start until all development is finished.

However, under Agile, several processes, such as development and testing, take place concurrently throughout the project timeline’s repeating cycles, which are divided into 2- to 4-week periods known as sprints. This is what allows QA to be integrated because it occurs continuously. QA is someone who is available and engaged at all times during the project.  

QA has a wide variety of roles and responsibilities in Agile software development. To fit in agile, QA should have a proper understanding of the agile environment. 

1. Attend Daily Scrum and Sprint Planning

There should be a 15 min daily standup meeting in the scrum where team members should define what they did yesterday and what they are going to do today. If there are any blockers in development then that should be brought up in the scrum meeting. QA should act as Proxy PM in the absence of PM 

Sprint planning is a meeting that is conducted before the sprint gets started. In this meeting, the user story is assigned to the development, and based on the assignment sprint gets started and developers start to work on stories and QA start to do requirement analysis and test case design. 

2. Participate in Estimating Stories

During the sprint planning meeting or backlog refinement meeting there should be estimation for each story based on workload and effort. The workload and effort must include both QA and developers’ effort and based on addition of effort, story point is allocated. 

3. Communication with Developers and Stakeholder

Testers should have excellent communication with all team members, especially developers because testers are playing a crucial role in agile methodology. QA should schedule a quick face-to-face handoff demonstration for every new feature and functionality.

This will help QA to better understand how the newly developed feature is working and it is a perfect time for them to raise questions to the development team. These will help you find minor issues and scenarios which developers miss while unit testing and save a lot of time. 

4. Participate in Retrospective meeting

In this meeting, the team should bring up 

● What went well ? 

● What didn’t go well ? 

● What can be done better 

In the absence of Scrum master, QA should facilitate meetings. If any high severity issue has been encountered during sprint, then that issue should be brought up in this meeting so that issue is not repeated in future. 

3 Best Practices for Agile Testing

1. Focus on one functionality at a time

One feature at a time should be the center of your attention, and each one should be tested to make sure it satisfies or exceeds the necessary quality requirements. The test case, which is crucial to the execution of software features and functionalities, should be examined and reviewed to ensure that it is correct. 

2. Goal-Oriented Work Approach

Agile software QA needs to plan and set goals before starting the testing process. As a QA, you need to understand the code call requirements and test suite framing. 

3. Code Austerity Needs to Be Maintained

Agile tests prove to be run repeatedly. According to the leading software developers, testing before and after coding is very important to accurately verify every unit of software. You can go ahead and run the code refactoring test again. 

3 Common mistakes QA Teams makes

1. Afraid of asking questions

Worrying about what others might think is one of the most common blockers in the day-to-day work of QA professionals. However, if the team misses the scenario by not asking questions, the results will be much worse. 

2. Forget the user experience

QA needs to think outside the box and test the features. If the team has UX suggestions, they need to share them with their clients. QA team should step in and suggest corrections. After all it’s the client’s call to make the final decision. 

3. Blaming others for bugs

No one should be blamed for the bugs/defects. But finding a way to avoid making the same mistakes can save a lot of time. Stay objective and keep your work in sync with other teams. Try to avoid blame games. 

Conclusion

In Conclusion, the role of a QA is not only bound to testing features but also taking part and refining Agile development processes to ensure the quality of the product. A QA can do this by taking part in various activities of a sprint like Planning and Retrospective meetings.  

To get the best possible results every time a QA’s work needs to be consistent. To ensure this, QA needs to focus on one functionality at a time, work to achieve a goal rather than to work to complete a task, and be strict on unnecessary changes made to the codes. 

Everyone makes mistakes, even QAs too. But to avoid common mistakes which may lead to serious issues/concerns a QA needs to be curious and clear out any confusions that arise, pay attention to details, recognize patterns and analyze the repeating bugs and avoid the blame game at all cost. 

Keeping these essential qualities and practices in mind, a QA can add value to a product.