Room
Room F3 - Track 3: Talks
Audience
QA Engineers and everyone interested in an approach of shared responsibilities in testing
Key-Learnings
- How the process of "team owns quality" works and what the tester's role is
- Exploring real-life examples QA engineers can assist teams with testing besides coaching
- What are the challenges that QA Engineers might encounter when testing becomes a team responsibilities and how to overcome them
“Testing is a team responsibility” might be a dream many teams are striving for. No more gatekeepers for quality! But what happens to a tester's role when the dream comes true? Is there still a meaningful place for a QA engineer within the team then?
Reflecting on my journey over the past 2.5 years, titled “welcome to the team, you are a tester but we don’t want you to either do manual testing or write automated tests”, it’s been quite an adventure! I transitioned from solely focusing on quality to becoming the Jack-of-All-Trades QA engineer.
- “Our mobile device testing platform slows you down? Let me look for alternatives.”
- “Do you also feel that developers and product people are misaligned? Hmm, what could I do to bring people together..”
- “It looks like our company’s localization process is a bottleneck for our releases. Let me see if I can help here!”
It turns out that besides coaching and bringing testing expertise to the table, which is no doubt crucial, there's even more that QA Engineers can do to assist their team with testing in this setup.
And of course, like any adventure, it has its own charms and challenges. How many times will impostor syndrome knock on your door when you find out that in theory, your team could operate without you? Might be too many to count.
I’ll be glad to tell you about the learnings I’ve made along the way and what surprises were waiting for me. See you!