QA Team Member as an Equal

[Ravindar Gujral]

Many organizations give a lot of weight to their developers but neglect their QA departments. There are many misconception about the role of QA. This happens more in bigger organizations where there is a greater emphasis on strict demarcation of responsibilities. This creates a culture of silos. It encourages developers to believe that they are not required to interact with QA. Most developers start thinking that they are better than QA and that all QA does is to nitpick at the beautiful software the developer has delivered.

Quality Assurance is more than defect recognition or Quality Control. A QA team member combines some unique skills, skills that embrace technical, process and, functional understanding of the system as well as a keen eye towards usability, especially critical for a UI-based system. Software QA (involving QC) is a craft, just like software development, and to think otherwise is to not understand software. Agile practices have helped reduce the misconceptions held regarding QA but there is a serious lack of understanding of the role of QA team members in most organizations, even the ones that adopt agile practices.

So let's review just some of what a QA team member brings to a team, especially an agile team:

• They interact with the customer and have an in-depth understanding of features being implemented. A good QA team member understands what the system does functionally. They illuminate dark areas of software.
• They interact with the developers, understanding the technical implementation of a feature. They work with the developers to help write valid tests for features being implemented.
• They help understand patterns of implementations and help improve process and consistency of software developed. They help with automation of tests, offering developers the rapid feedback that is necessary as they build software.
• They help developers maintain the quality of the software features being delivered.

Above points are but a few things that a QA team member provides to a team. If you find that your organization sidelines QA, remind them the importance of QA.

Every organization should put as much time into hiring a QA team member as they put in hiring a developer. QA is a craft that takes years of practice. Your brightest and the smartest team members should consider becoming QA. Also every developer should learn to respect QA team members and treat them as equals.