According to the World Quality Report 2021, software testing and quality assurance play a bigger role in development than ever, as it is finally seen as about more than finding defects.
Qualitative product contributes to business growth and customer satisfaction. But what if your QA team doesn’t follow the best quality assurance practices nor does a very good job of preventing defects?
With more than 5 years of experience establishing QA processes, UTOR gained expertise on how to effectively manage QA teams and overcome common challenges. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at essential skills and abilities every QA Manager should have and give some tips on how to improve team performance.
QA Manager Role and Responsibilities
Who is a QA Manager?
QA Managers develop the quality assurance process and oversee the activity of analysts, architects, engineers, and other QA team members to make sure that the software products meet the requirements. Therefore, QA Managers take responsibility for the project’s success.
QA Manager vs QA Lead
QA Team Lead is another important role in QA team management. In small companies or startup projects, QA Lead and QA Manager responsibilities are combined and executed by the same person. Their duties vary greatly depending on project goals and requirements.
However, bigger projects usually divide these two positions. Unlike the QA Manager’s work, this role includes mostly non-technical administrative work and communication with stakeholders. That’s why the QA leader job description usually includes strong communication skills for cross-functional collaboration with developers and product owners.
Responsibility #1: Building a QA team
Every particular project requires the specific skill-set of QA specialists, which may vary depending on a development stage, business needs, and requirements. One of the main tasks of a QA Manager is to select the proper blend of QA roles and responsibilities combined with soft skills and build up a complete team with the required expertise.
Responsibility #2: Setting up Rules and Standards
Different departments within one company should function as one entity to maintain a high level of quality throughout all the stages of the development process. Therefore, QA Manager should work closely with the development team to define rules and standards of QA processes. For instance, the specifications include types of testing tools, frameworks, strategies, and methodologies.
Responsibility #3: Selecting Proper Metrics
The QA Manager should establish the key performance KPIs at the planning stage, and measure performance against them during the QA process. However, it is important to choose proper software testing metrics to see a bigger picture and consider the context of results and analyze them effectively. Performance assessing methods should include both quantitative and qualitative metrics based on different testing types used in the QA process.
At UTOR, we usually include regression and retesting ratio, the average cost of a bug fix, error rate, test set efficiency, and defect rate to evaluate the quality assurance but metric set may vary in different projects.
Responsibility #4: Defining a Scope of Work and Allocating Resources
The QA Manager determines which technologies to use to cover the project needs and assigns team members to accomplish tasks accordingly. For instance, developing automation scripts requires solid knowledge of automation testing tools, therefore QA Manager has to assign this task to a QA Automation Engineer with the proper expertise. As for the scope of testing, it should be defined within the context of each release and delivery to match the product requirements changes.
Responsibility #5: Connect Departments to Deliver the Final Product Quality
QA Manager functions as a link between developers, QA architects, and testers when software quality problems arise. It is critical to evaluate the entire status of a product and identify bottlenecks to make timely adjustments since QA Manager receives information from all of these teams. This is how managed testing helps enhance and optimize work efficiency and bring every team member up to speed.
Challenges of Managing QA Teams
Effective Communication
Lack of understanding, language barriers, and cultural differences may become serious obstacles to achieving the highest level of team productivity. To avoid this, the roles and responsibilities of the QA Manager should include assessing soft skills as well as using various communication methods, and clarifying all the requirements and criteria before the start of the project.
QA managers need to:
- Effectively report the overall status of QA team to company’s management.
- Communicate properly with both engineers and developers as well as non-technical team members, especially clarifying the technical challenges to the higher management.
- Conduct regular meetings.
Developers VS QAs
It is crucially important for QA Manager to maintain a mutual respect policy and avoid conflicts between the development and quality assurance teams. A strong and friendly cooperation between departments will enable them to work together to uncover bugs early.
Teamwork
A healthy working environment inside the QA team is just as essential as cross-department communication. QA Managers should have at least the basic conflict resolution strategies to avoid the working relationship issues that may potentially impact teamwork.
Confidentiality
To keep the confidential company’s information safe, the QA manager should ensure that each QA team member signed a thorough NDA before accessing the project details. If you consider outsourcing QA, it is crucial to find a trustworthy partner. Make sure to evaluate reviews, recommendations, and case studies to ensure the company’s reliability.
Unclear Roadmap
Each project requires detailed documentation and clear steps to perform tasks for the QA team. Neglecting the proper bug tracking procedures and lack of coordination inside the team lead to potential quality issues and missed defects. The QA Manager should establish effective workflow and cooperation between teams, so each worker has a clear vision of the QA process and its outcomes.
Lack of Involvement
In order to cut costs, companies often tend to start the QA process at the end of the development stage. In this case, QA specialists can’t impact the product quality in the same way as if they would have been involved since the early development stages. Involving a quality assurance team since the very beginning allows identifying logical conflicts and discrepancies and preventing product defects early instead of finding them later.
Unrealistic Schedule
The QA team should get enough time to test the product, however, tight deadlines typically push compromising on the overall quality. To solve this issue, the QA Manager should create a deliverables schedule, taking into account all the possible risks and use the responsibility assignment matrix to allocate the resources. These actions will help to prevent delays and cut project costs.
The UTOR’s Take: 7 Team Management Best Practices
There are a few methods QA Managers at UTOR use to increase motivation and improve team efficiency.
- Encourage Knowledge Sharing
Exchanging knowledge empowers your team members and motivates them to constantly improve. Sharing of expertise benefits both the providers (who feel that their contributions are appreciated) and recipients (who gain new skills and outlooks). The QA Manager has to ensure that each team member can take the initiative, share ideas, and get feedback. Furthermore, it expands the overall domain knowledge and helps to avoid bottlenecks in the QA process.
- Reward Success
QA Managers might be overwhelmed by challenges and operational routine, but always should take time to recognize and show appreciation for the outstanding work of their team members. Rewarding QA specialists for introducing process improvements will create a working atmosphere where everyone feels valued and motivated.
- Learn from Mistakes
Use failures as an opportunity to help your team avoid repeating the same errors in the future. Moreover, if a mistake was made by a QA Manager, it is crucially important for them to admit it to help others learn from it.
- Have Face-to-Face Meetings With Team Members
One-to-one meetings give QA Managers the opportunity to learn more about their team members, their ambitions, skills they want to develop, and overall satisfaction with their current role. Individual conversations also help to uncover potential issues before they make an impact on a whole team.
- Frequently Evaluate QA Team
Tracking the KPIs helps to discover issues and assess the team’s success. The QA Manager should refer to the software testing documentation regularly, to discover potential issues, inefficient processes, or unnecessary actions that are driving up costs. Therefore, the QA Manager should make sure that the quality assurance team is reaching the planned goals and take action if any issues arise.
- Involve Stakeholders in Relevant Discussions
The QA team must be involved in the business processes and help the clients to achieve their business goals. Without clear understanding of the business goals, the target audience of the product, and client’s expectations, it is impossible to build a reliable QA process. The QA Manager should schedule meetings with other departments at the early development stages to let the QA team learn more about the product they are going to test.
- Encourage Working on Soft Skills and Communication Style
In order to create a productive environment, it is essential for the QA Manager to treat the team members with respect, and provide them with detailed and actionable feedback. Moreover, effective communication can expose team productivity on an everyday basis.
Red Flags in QA Management
Here are some common mistakes to watch out for and avoid in the QA team management:
Lack of Expertise
QA Managers should constantly work on improving both soft and hard skills. Quality certification courses, such as CMSQ (Certified Manager of Software Quality) offer an excellent opportunity to gain new tech knowledge to meet consistent quality standards. Meanwhile, investing time in enhancing communication and social networking skills allows gaining confidence and respect within a team.
UTOR’s Tip: Access the external expertise of an independent QA Expert and conduct a solid audit of your QA process to investigate the possible issues and bottlenecks.
Not Seeing the Bigger Picture
The ability to investigate issues and dig deeper to find the roots of the problem is one of the key competencies of a QA Manager. For instance, repetitive errors might be caused by mistakes in the documentation. Blaming team members for every misstep instead of proper analysis is definitely not the best solution to fix the QA process.
Focusing on Finding Bugs Instead of Preventing Them
When the QA team focuses on damage control, even the best quality system can be overwhelmed. A qualified QA Manager should seek preventative solutions and spot potential defects as early as possible since the cost of a bug only rises with time. Obviously, it is impossible to prevent 100% of software issues, but it is essential to put effort into identifying them on the early stages as well as finding them later.
Read more: How to Set Up a Proper QA Process in Your Company?
Not Taking Steps Gradually
If a QA Manager is trying to change all at once and rebuild the whole QA process in one iteration, this could be an alarming signal to review these actions. Every change should start with one specific focus area and allow team members to comfortably adapt to the new circumstances.
Bottom Line
A QA Manager role must not only include deep domain expertise, but also a great variety of soft skills to support an efficient working environment and keep the team motivated.
The scope of work for the QA team may vary in different projects, but effective QA management allows focusing on preventing quality issues instead of focusing on fixing product bugs and defects.
Building an in-house QA team and setting up a proper QA process may become a great challenge for software companies, so why not outsource quality management to experts? Learn how your project can benefit from the QA expertise at UTOR!
great article