Most frequently we are using words “testing” and “tester” when talk about product quality. But does testing or tester role affect quality? The eternal struggle between QC and QA… Yes, I’m almost sure you understand this, but why nothing is changed in most of teams? Because we need mind shift in our heads and more global changes in QA processes. Who QA engineers are and what are their responsibilities, activities, duties in modern development world? What options do they have to affect product quality and improve it if developers are responsible for product development? In this talk I will try to find detailed practical answers to all these questions. Let’s change development world together!

1. How QA engineers
could affect quality?
Mikalai Alimenkou
http://xpinjection.com
@xpinjection

5. Disclaimer
This talk is based on
personal experience

7. Let’s take regular Scrum

8. #1. Sprint Planning/Grooming
QA engineer as a glue brings:
- testability questions and risks
- scope clarification from all sides
- external integrations
- test planning for User Stories in scope
- feature "release schedule" with due dates and
correct order
- historical perspective on issues/defects in
similar components/tasks/stories
- non-functional requirements

9. OK, Sprint is started

10. #2. Daily Scrum meeting
QA engineer reminds about:
- discussed risks
- due dates confirmation
- early results review/demo
- found issues and defects
… and helps developers with tests and test data

11. First User Stories delivered

12. #3. User Story acceptance
QA engineer does:
- smart story testing to bring real issues ASAP
and avoid rework
- reduce manual work to test/retest quickly

13. Almost everything is DONE

14. #4. ”Stabilization”
QA engineer could be smart:
- effectively distribute
regression testing activities
- impact analysis to reduce
time
- synchronize efforts with
automated testing
- effective communication to
fix issues ASAP

15. Inspect and adapt

16. #5. Retrospective
QA engineer initiates:
- true root cause analysis of quality issues
- active discussions on the problems happened
- challenging current approaches to improve
continuously
- artefacts update (heat map, test/code coverage,
test data management)

17. QA engineers must
… and focus
on quality
… be integrated
in the team

18. @xpinjection
http://xpinjection.com
mikalai.alimenkou@xpinjection.com