🀝Testers Communications, Task and Responsibilities

Testers communication skills is essential

Testers have to communicate with people at all roles and levels of the company. And on top of that, QA is at the front line when it comes to finding bugs and user experience issues β€” all of which need to be communicated well.

Communicating Bug principles

Creating a bug ticket is one way of communication bug-related communication doesn’t end there.

  1. Sound the alarm for showstoppers. Means that a bug must be fixed immediately. Communication action:

    1. File a bug and assigned to responsible Dev

    2. Notify everyone in the team about the bug thru Slack attaching the ticket

  2. When in doubt, file a ticket. Scenario: Let’s say you notice what seems like a minor issue (or area for user experience improvement). You might figure that your daily stand-up meeting is a good time to ask whether or not your product manager wants a bug ticket for it. But not having a written record of this can backfire. Someone might tell you to forget about the issue, and that it doesn’t matter. Remember people have short attention spans – especially when looking to place blame. When a higher-up asks about it later, the same person might come to you asking why you never found the bug. 1. File potential issue as bug ticket. If a manager decides they don’t want it addressed, they can simply delete the ticket or move it to the backlog.

  3. Customize your communication. If you’re describing a bug to a developer, you’ll want to provide as much technical detail as possible. Communication between QA and development tends to get pretty in-depth. But if you’re telling a project manager, you may want to give more of an overview.

    1. Describing a bug to a developer, needs more technical details as possible. Note: Communications between QA and Dev tends to get pretty in-depth.

    2. Describing a bug to Project manager, you may want to give more of an overview.

Slack Etiquette

  1. Be straightforward about what you need.

    1. Be clear about what you need but don't forget to have a friendly approach. Ex: β€œHi! Happy Friday. When you have a chance, can you let me know which iOS build I should test next?”

  2. Follow best practices for tagging.

    1. For relaying or want to get important information that need quick attention, Tag the relevant person in the Project channel.

    2. Don't tag a "@here" in the channel when the message is not urgent

  3. Be mindful of what you say in public channels.

    1. When tagging @here , the message should not say anything inappropriate

    2. Observe the channels topic and stay only to the topic when messaging.

QA Communication and Timing

  • Time of day: If you need to have an important conversation or meeting, don’t schedule it at the end of the day.

  • Meeting schedules: If at all possible, don’t call impromptu meetings. People need time to prepare, and interrupting the flow of in-progress work can really derail productivity.

  • Meeting length: If you’re in a stand-up, Sprint Planning, or any other Agile QA process meeting, try to come prepared. If you know what you’re going to cover in advance, you can avoid rambling.

  • Email and Slack responsiveness: As the person receiving an email or instant message, it’s generally polite to respond in a timely manner. But this also doesn’t mean you should let Email/Slack run your life. If you’re in the middle of important work, you shouldn’t feel like you have to stop what you’re doing every time you hear a β€œnew message” ding. In fact, you may even want to mute the sound. Finding a balance between being responsive and helpful without hindering your productivity (or sanity!) is key.

  • If you’re part of a meeting or call, try your best to be on time, every time.

  • Reporting problems: It’s best to be report about your blocker as early on as possible. Otherwise, not only will you look deceitful for having waited so long to come forward, but there will also be less time to come up with a solution.

Respect

  1. Avoid bigotry – even in the form of jokes

  2. Ask rather than demand.

  3. Seek info before placing blame.

Task and responsibilities

Manual QA Engineer Responsibilities

  • Review requirements, specifications and technical design documents to provide timely and meaningful feedback

  • Create detailed, comprehensive and well-structured test plans and test cases

  • Estimate, prioritize, plan and coordinate testing activities

  • Identify, record, document thoroughly and track bugs

  • Perform thorough regression testing when bugs are resolved

  • Develop and apply testing processes for new and existing products to meet client needs

  • Liaise with internal teams (e.g. developers and product managers) to identify system requirements

  • Monitor debugging process results

  • Investigate the causes of non-conforming software and train users to implement solutions

  • Track quality assurance metrics, like defect densities and open defect counts

  • Stay up-to-date with new testing tools and test strategies

Role and Responsibilities of QA Automation Engineer

  • write test scripts;

  • carry out automated regression tests after every update and release of the new software version;

  • run performance tests (load, stress, spike tests, etc.) to check how the software works in extreme conditions;

  • set the priority for automation scenarios and work to maximize test coverage;

  • write documentation on automated testing and select new automated tools.

Software QA Manager Role and Responsibilities

  • prepares the test strategy for the project, defines the list of task for all;

  • sets metrics to measure the quality of work and keeps track of everyone’s performance;

  • calculates testing budget, estimates the efforts;

  • supervises the testing part of the working process.

QA Lead Responsibilities

  • hiring the staff – engineers, analysts, architects, and other members;

  • supervision of team members and processes, ensuring team consistency;

  • accepting the requirements from product owners and clarifying them to the team;

  • setting quality metrics for the entire team;

  • representing the team on cross-functional meetings;

  • constantly improving the quality of testing and working environment in general.

reference: https://u-tor.com/topic/qa-roles-and-responsibilities

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