QA Lead: How to Excel in Today’s Tech World

Anushree Chatterjee

Quality Assurance (QA) is more than software testing. It is a mindset meant to be adopted by all, not just testers. For junior and senior-level testers, the focus still remains on software testing and its nitty-gritty, like writing test cases every sprint, executing them, and publishing the reports for the same. However, if you are a QA Lead or are aspiring to be one, you need to broaden your horizons and think beyond these tasks.

This post will help you understand why QA Leads need to rise above and how they can do it.

General Responsibilities of a QA Lead

If you look at the job description of a QA Lead, you’ll see them performing the following tasks across the board:

• Defining testing goals and objectives aligned with project requirements, read: How to Align Software Engineering with Business Goals
• Creating a comprehensive test plan outlining test cases, methodologies, and timelines
• Implementing and maintaining effective testing processes
• Motivating and mentoring team members
• Assigning tasks and ensuring quality output
• Overseeing the entire software testing lifecycle, from planning to execution and closure
• Tracking defects and bugs identified during testing, read: Minimizing Risks: The Impact of Late Bug Detection
• Reporting test results and progress to stakeholders
• Analyzing test metrics to identify areas for improvement
• Working closely with developers, product managers, and other stakeholders
• Facilitating clear communication between the QA team and other departments
• Participating in meetings like sprint planning and retrospectives

However, based on different organization’s expectations, the role may require additional efforts from QA Leads.

How to be a Better QA Lead?

You can up your game and be a better QA Lead, one who is indispensable due to their work ethic and ways of managing QA. Here are some tricks that will help you excel in today’s tech world:

Understand the business

Working in silos tends to make teams agnostic of the bigger picture and their contribution to it. This usually happens when teams get too used to their day-to-day routines. But to enforce a culture of QA, you must understand what you are striving to maintain quality for.

Take time to understand the business’s know-how and how the software plays a role here. Exploring the software is a good way to get your hands dirty. Connecting with other team members, such as product managers and QA managers, and attending town hall meetings will help you gain this perspective.

How this translates into QA is that once you have a thorough understanding of the business and the modules you are responsible for, you will automatically be able to predict what is expected of the system and its vulnerabilities. For example, if you are responsible for testing the checkout module of an e-commerce website, then you need to understand this e-commerce system first, what all does your company deal with through this website, the kind of load on various modules like checkout, and so on. Read: Why Companies Switch to testRigor for E-Commerce Testing?

Remember, you influence your team. So if you have this mindset of being curious about the business, then your team will also follow suit.

Change your mindset about QA

There are many misconceptions about QA and testing, like

And so on…

But here’s the thing – QA is much more than running test cases and logging bugs. QA and testing can be very powerful tools that will give you deep insights into your system, quite like various medical tests, such as a blood test. The results of a blood test can be used to interpret a whole host of good and bad things happening within the human body.

Thus, to summarize it, you should look at QA as:

• A diagnostic tool to regulate your system
• An ongoing process that needs to be everyone’s responsibility, not just the tester’s
• Focus on preventing defects instead of just finding them

Teach your team to collaborate effectively with developers, product managers, and other stakeholders. This will further prompt everyone to break down silos and foster a “one team” mentality.

Make bug reports business-centric

Business dictates what every single function will do – a developer will develop what the business wants, and a tester will test from the perspective of business requirements. In such an environment, a mere copy-paste of bug reports does an average job. You need to stand out and make valuable contributions to the business through your quality analysis. Hence, try to report bugs and system behaviors in the context of business values and how they may affect business requirements.

Let’s understand this with an example.

An e-commerce company selling athletic wear decides to redesign its website to improve user experience and increase sales. They conduct user testing and gather data on user behavior to identify areas for improvement.

The testing results highlight that:

• 52% of users found the product search function difficult to use. This translates to a significant number of potential customers who might be abandoning the website without finding what they’re looking for.
• 70% of users didn’t scroll past the first page of product results. This suggests that the product filtering and sorting options are not effective in helping users discover relevant products.
• A/B testing showed that a new product recommendation section on the cart page increased average order value by 10%. Read: Alpha vs. Beta Testing: A Comprehensive Guide.

These findings were reported in a way that treats the results as information to better the system. Here’s an example of that as well:

• By making the search function more user-friendly and refining product filtering, the company can expect to convert more website visitors into paying customers. This directly translates to increased revenue. (To improve conversion rates)
• The new product recommendation section on the cart page entices customers to purchase additional items, boosting the average revenue per customer. (Raise average order value)
• A website that is easier to navigate and provides a more personalized shopping experience can lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, potentially increasing repeat business. (Enhance customer experience)

Processes are important, but not always

Most teams follow Agile, which is a great way to develop and improve the product continuously. However, this also means less time-to-market, tight deadlines, and chaos inorder to achieve these goals. To bring order to the madness, you need to lay down processes.

Processes vary from team to team, even within the same organization. As a QA Lead, you’ll be entrusted to uphold these processes within your own team. This can be done through daily sync-up meetings and transparency between team members when it comes to their progress and deliveries.

But here’s the catch. Along with this discipline, you need to be flexible. Sometimes, you need to make exceptions and override certain processes based on the current situation. For example, if a major bug is found in the production environment, you need your team to fix and test it. This task takes precedence over all else. Once the issue is resolved, the bug fix needs to be reflected in production, where the user (who is probably dissatisfied) is. Know Testing in Production: What’s the Best Approach?

Another impact that is seen with QA Leads who obsess over processes is that they lose sight of what testing is supposed to be about – finding more information about the system, sharing this information, and building a better one. Maybe this obsession comes with the monotony of tasks or the pressure to show an all-passed report in front of higher-ups. Whatever the case, it can be detrimental if you become a horse with blinkers in this aspect.

Lead your team

It is easy to be one of those Leads that just worry about execution reports and processes. However, a good QA Lead needs to do more than just that – they need to lead their team.

Build a team that understands what QA is about and how to do it while being disciplined yet flexible at the same time. You have the power to set the tone for all of this. Try to lead by example as much as possible. If a new feature is being introduced by the product owner, teach your team to question these requirements from a quality perspective. Show them how to write good test cases, execute them efficiently, and analyze reports to derive relevant, actionable insights for developers as well as product owners.

Mentor your team members to take on more responsibilities as well in times of crisis. Motivate and develop your QA team members. Delegate tasks effectively and provide opportunities for growth. Foster a culture of open communication and continuous learning.

Keep learning and contributing

When you wear the crown of a QA Lead, your team expects a lot from you. Though you may not know everything, nobody does; you should always try to grow.

This role can be quite demanding, where you end up managing various aspects of QA, dealing with different teams, and participating in multiple discussions. You might find all of this quite daunting but don’t lose heart. This role is a great opportunity for you to not only build your repertoire but also build a case to rise to higher ranks.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to building yourself into an exceptional leader:

• Understand what the role expects of you – your day-to-day tasks
• Understand the tech stack and tools used for these tasks
• Based on the above understanding, what tasks are you already good at?
• What tasks are you finding challenging?
• What skills do you need to deal with these tasks?
• What opportunities are available to you to exercise your skills?

The above retrospection will help you identify actionable tasks for yourself. To work on these things, you can learn by observing your peers, do courses (especially if it’s technology related), and ask questions wherever needed.

A good way for you to exercise your existing skills and build new ones is by participating in product discussions early on to identify potential risks and ensure quality is built into the product. During these discussions, you’ll learn the business aspect of things from product managers and the technical perspective (like load capacity and limitations) from the developers. All this will help you gain enough knowledge to make informed decisions and provide guidance to your own QA team.

Remember, as long as you keep a growth mindset, you will be able to adapt to whatever comes your way. The moment you get too comfortable with what’s happening around you, even the slightest change of wind will knock your hat off. All of this will inadvertently affect how your team works.

Balance manual and automated testing

This is a common problem across companies. There’s this notion that automating testing will give complete quality control, that is, no bugs, making the team’s life easier. If you are one of those propagators, then stop. Automation, while a powerful way of testing, is not a panacea to all QA woes. Neither is manual testing all bad.

Manual testing is a very effective strategy since no machine can match the human brain. It is suitable for exploratory testing, UI testing, and scripting creative test cases. On the other hand, automated testing is a boon for repetitive tasks like regression testing, sanity testing, test execution, and test reporting. Know about Transitioning from Manual to Automated Testing.

As a QA Lead, you need to be smart about which testing strategy you leverage, in which situation. Having said that, you need to keep up with the rising demands for quality within small time frames. Hence, find automation testing tools that offer capabilities that will empower your manual QA team to write and run tests efficiently and quickly.

testRigor for automated testing

If you are a QA Lead who has been dabbling in test automation for a while, you would know the problems with it, like test maintenance issues, flakey test runs due to poor infrastructure of the tool, and difficult test writing due to programming languages. To keep up with the Agile world, you should try out one of the best solutions in the market – testRigor.

testRigor is an AI-based cloud platform that will allow you to overcome all the challenges associated with test automation. Let’s see how it does this.

If you wish to empower your manual QA team or promote collaboration between various teams (like testers, product owners, and developers), then testRigor offers an easy solution. See how it is a Test Automation Tool For Manual Testers.

It allows you to write test cases in plain English language. You can automate testing for various functional, end-to-end, UI, regression, and API testing across platforms (web, mobile, desktop) and browsers. Thus, everyone can write and read these test cases. The tool makes it very easy to identify UI elements as well. You need not worry about implementation details like XPaths and CSS tags, just mention where the UI element appears on the screen. testRigor’s generative AI engine will figure out the rest!

By using AI, testRigor makes your test maintenance negligible so that you can focus on other creative tasks like coming up with valuable test cases. This tool integrates with most other tools and platforms, allowing you to build a holistic QA ecosystem.

Conclusion

If you wish to make an impact as a QA Lead, just doing your tasks is not enough. You need to think out of the box, challenge yourself to grow, and find ways to keep motivating your team to achieve excellence. While on this path, take help of modern tools and technology for learning and bettering processes within your organization.

FAQs

What are the essential skills required for a QA Lead?

As a QA Lead, you should develop your:

• Technical Skills: Proficiency in QA tools, programming languages, and test automation frameworks.
• Leadership Skills: Effective communication, team management, conflict resolution, and mentorship.
• Analytical Skills: Strong problem-solving abilities and attention to detail.

How can I keep up with the latest trends in QA?

Try the following tips to keep up with the latest QA trends:

• Continuous Learning: Enroll in online courses, attend webinars, and obtain relevant certifications.
• Networking: Participate in QA forums, conferences, and professional groups to exchange knowledge with peers.
• Reading: Follow QA blogs, industry news, and publications to stay updated.

How can I foster a quality-first mindset in my team?

Use these techniques to develop a quality-first mindset within your team:

• Early Involvement: Involve QA from the early stages of the development lifecycle to identify issues early.
• Shift-Left Testing: Promote practices that move testing earlier in the process, such as unit testing and code reviews.
• Quality Culture: Encourage a culture where quality is everyone’s responsibility, not just the QA team’s.

What are the common challenges faced by QA Leads, and how can they be overcome?

QA Leads tend to face these common challenges:

• Time Constraints: Prioritize testing activities based on risk and impact. Implement automation to save time.
• Resource Limitations: Optimize resource allocation and leverage external resources or tools when necessary.
• Changing Requirements: Stay flexible and adaptable, maintaining open communication with stakeholders to manage changes effectively.