On my last post I received a question about why I called my blog ‘Trust me I’m a QA’, regarding on that no all testers are QA a not all of us do the same, today I want to share my opinion on the roles we see and work with every day.
Working on Software testing we see different positions, names that would define what we do, as a team is very important to have this really defined, so tasks can be assigned correspondingly but there are significantly differences on the roles played.
We start with Testers, here we have a member that is able to follow simple steps to recreate an scenario that would give us on expected result, normally involved on the production line, following already set up suit of Test cases to verify that our software meets the client expectations and results, in case of finding any problem the tester would have to report such bug following the company procedure for it.
Then we have QC (Quality Control), which involves checking our project against a set of requirements and validations to make sure we are meeting predefined requirements, with smoke test or funcional testing we can make sure we are on the right track, QC is normally applied right at the end of the production line, taking one module at the time to verify its functionality. In case any problem a bug must be created following the company process for it.
QA Analyst who is more pointing to the business logic of the application more immersed on the understanding of the logic flaws during the requirement writing phase involved mostly on the beginning on each project, helping improving and pointing out any problem before the code begins
Quality Assurance (QA) is more providing the tools and constant improvements to maintain all the rest job up to date by also involving and combine it’s tasks of them all, but more than that, the QA is responsible of creating Test Scenarios, Test Cases, verify requirements, creating reports, testing as well as following up new features and requirements, also giving back insight on the project on points that would improve the UX in general, this role goes all the way from the beginning and continues even when the project is complete.
The QA job goes beyond testing, it requires a more technical profile so it can improve not only the project but been able to see beyond therefore been able to detect problems now or in the future that other may not see helping to create a better product at the end.
This post is focus on manual side of software testing but also keep in mind that we have the Automation QA in charge of creating automated testing so we can save time on deliver a faster results on daily basis mostly used on big projects or constant delivery teams.
In a perfect world we should have this positions really defined and a member for each, but the reality is that being Tester, QC, Analyst or QA, we all have been involved on all these process which makes a QA team great, each role is different but all of them have the same goal, improving and creating a better and flawless product.
