QA

Quality assurance includes monitoring product compliance with all standards, data analysis, and quality improvement. As well as planning, creating, conducting tests, and documenting found bugs and errors (a domain of testing , or QC – quality control ). Ideally, QA specialists have the right to influence the development process and make changes if they find an improvement that would prevent defects.


In small companies, QAs often perform the responsibilities of a tester . These professions are often confused. A vacancy titled "QA engineer" may contain a list of responsibilities specific to a tester .


There are also QA automation specialists who design automated tests.

Job responsibilities

Tester 

  • Develop test plans and scenarios
  • Execute tests
  • Document found bugs and defects
  • Preparing reports
  • Re-test fixed bugs 
  • Categorize and analyze defects and bugs (statistically or by comparing to defined company standards)

 

QA 

  • Work on improving product quality, optimize testing processes
  • Analyze test results and identify the causes of defects
  • Plan the tests, write test cases, scenarios
  • Communicate with developers
  • Track the lifecycle of errors
  • Suggest development process improvements as needed, develop new design standards, ensure company-wide compliance


Automation QA 

  • Automate test cases
  • Configure a test environment and prepare data
  • Write, execute, and maintain automated tests and test scripts, troubleshoot automation software
  • Integrate tests in a CI/CD platform
  • Develop an automation framework 


Skills

  • Proficiency in creating test documentation: test scenarios, test plan, test cases, checklists
  • Knowledge of the types of testing and conditions for using each of them
  • Working with a bug tracker (for example, Bugzilla, Mantis, or more universal project management systems such as Redmine or Jira) 
  • Understanding of test design techniques ( equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, state transition testing, decision table) 
  • Knowledge of databases and writing basic queries to them 


Automation QA also requires knowledge of a programming language (the language depends on the language used on the project) and the following skills:

  • Using development frameworks (Selenium, Appium) and automatic testing tools (UFT, Ranorex, Katalon Studio)
  • Experience with version control systems (Git, SVN, Mercurial) and code repositories
  • Experience with continuous integration systems (Jenkins, TeamCity).

FAQ

We have collected the most common questions from clients whom we helped to find QA specialists and prepared answers to these questions. Need more information? Write to us.

1. Who should I hire – a QA specialist or a tester ?

It depends on the tasks. A tester finds and documents bugs so that they can be corrected. A QA engineer performs more global tasks, they ' re aimed at improving the quality of the product in general, and the processes associated with its development. They ' re focused on preventing errors. But they can also work as a tester. However, if you need a tester, but you call the position "QA engineer ", the employee may be surprised at the narrow range of tasks and the lack of opportunities to influence processes.
If you don't have a QA yet, you should start by hiring a manual QA. When automation is necessary, testers and QAs are likely to raise this issue.
In some companies, especially with the Agile approach, developers can partially perform QA tasks. They use techniques such as code review and test - driven development . But, in fact, QA is not just about the technical perfection of the code. A QA specialist can identify problems that users could encounter, and the mentioned technical methods are not intended for this purpose. In addition, the average developer's salary is higher than that of a QA specialist, and even more so of a tester . So the decision to work without QA may be more expensive.
There are no significant differences in specialists’ skills and responsibilities. Mobile app testing has some specific features (for example, you should take into consideration limited memory or interruptions of the app operation with calls, SMS, etc.), but it is not difficult to learn them , and game testers usually require gaming experience.
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