Quality Assurance Engineers are crucial in software development and are an important part of the scrum team where they work closely with developers and product owners. QAs are not only testers of deployed apps; they are the superheroes who maintain high level of quality and speed throughout the whole software development life cycle. They are involved from the very beginning as early as the Planning stage of a project, to make sure the product meets its requirements and is ready to be released in time.
The QA's day usually starts with scrum meetings; the daily stand ups where they discuss progress, blockers and any other issues related to the sprint they are executing. QAs also attend weekly development meetings, retrospectives and many of their meetings within the company. Moreover, They communicate daily with developers to discuss situations encountered during testing, get clarification on certain ambiguous scenarios/behaviors.
Software testing is a huge part of the QA role. They design test plans, suites and prepare test cases. Moreover, they set up test environments, devices, and prepare test data. In addition, automating tests and refactoring test scripts is a big part of their jobs. Adding to that is reporting bugs and classifying them by priorities.
{ not tested == not done }QA Engineers are well known for their excellent writing skills; and they deploy these skills in documentation, such as documentation of test progress and results. As well as assisting in documenting requirements of software projects.Conducting researches on new tools and technologies relevant to their field.
Finally, they continuously invest their time and efforts in self-development and studying. They also share their knowledge by training other colleagues.
Being a Quality Assurance Engineer is a highly rewarding job to do. QAs get to work on a variety of tasks that keeps their extensive skill set in shape while constantly developing new skills. Depending on the industry or product, their role could be saving lives and businesses.
