SQA: Our Tasking

• We have to produce and maintain more tests than is physically possible. Obviously this is not an attainable goal, so our attainable goal is simply to automate as much as possible with the time we have, with sensitivity to both the business and dev priorities, and to do that consistently (which means not killing ourselves in the process).

• What is our remit if our role is Quality Assurance Engineer?

  • Define tests which will prove the positive cases defined in the requirements/user stories/etc. (Getting the correct error message on invalid input is still a positive case for the purposes of this discussion.)

    • Absent that, we make wild guesses at what the System Under Test is supposed to do, and hold it to that until told better.

  • Document those tests (and advocate for suitable tools if they are not available, and no, Excel doesn’t count)

  • Execute those tests and deliver bugs for requirements not met

  • Think of the things the developer didn’t

  • User advocate

• What is our remit if our role is Automation Engineer?

  • Deliver tests which will prove the positives

  • Implement those tests in a way where maintenance can be minimized and stability maximized

  • Document the code units that implement those tests such that the whole team can use them

  • We report on defects found in automation AND FLAG THEM AS FOUND IN AUTOMATION.

• What is our remit if our role is Automation Architect?

  • Consistently deliver build go/no go decisions

  • Define the standards by which the tests and their execution environment(s) will be built and maintained such that:

    • We maximize reuse

    • We maximize stability and uptime

    • We maximize the access to information

    • We minimize the time to bring new people up to speed

    • We minimize the time required to identify and isolate issues

    • We minimize the time required to look stuff up during test development and debugging

  • We document, design, implement, delegate, train, validate, source expertise and otherwise do what it takes to make sure that our team can do all of the above

    • In particular, we want to be training our replacement(s) from day one. We are responsible for assuring success even if we’re no longer available.

  • Communicate with other teams about our needs, accomplishments, test results, RPA, automation training, and anything else we can provide.