What is the New QA Role?

Over lunch the other day we got some food-for-thought from a colleague Sandesh Pawar on ” What are the skills required for the QA role”? His view was QA = skills of (BA + SA + Testing). The rest of the discussion went on over coffee and other breaks with Rakesh Singal and Masood Khatri resulting into the need for this post. Through this post we would like to get your views on the skills required for the QA role -

1. Traditional view - Quality Assurance in software borrows a lot of concepts from the Manufacturing world. As such QA has been regarded purely as a “testing” function and in many organizations still viewed as something that happens after the coding or construction phase.
2. Confusion - There are so many different ways in which this function has been viewed in the industry - QA, QC, Testing, System Testing, Integration Testing, Functional Testing and the list goes on. Some have gone to the length of inculding the company’s process improvement effort also under this umbrella. There is no single definition that clearly captures the demanding role of QA in the current times.
3. Defect Detection and Removal - Going back to basics, human activity is prone to introducing errors in the process and hence the need to detect them. In an ideal world if all human activities were perfect there would be no need for testing. But in reality, regardless of the software development methodology implemented there will be “Defects Injected” into the process i.e. Requirements gathering, technical design, coding etc. The definition of testing that we are seeking should cover all those “Defect Detection and Removal” activities that needs to be performed throughout the lifecycle of a project. Defects are not simply “bugs” in the code but cover all types of discrepancies in the thinking process, understanding of the real business need, various documents and diagrams, designs, code etc.
4. Defect Prevention - Process improvement efforts, process maturity, CMMI, TQM, zero defect goals, Six Sigma and other standards are geared towards helping the cause of Defect Prevention.
5. So what is the new QA role? This gets me back to the reason for this post. Our view is that the responsibility of Assuring Quality in an organization’s end products or services does not belong to one person or team. It is a discipline or a way of life that all parties need to adopt. However, an indepedent Quality Assurance group is recommended that is responsible to ensure guidelines, industry best practices and standards are adopted and strives to continuously improve the organization’s process capability. The QA role in such an environment requires a combination of skills ranging from Business Domain Knowledge, Technology background, Process discipline and finally the analytical ability and the “sixth sense” to uncover defects that may be superficial as well as deeply connected to flawed business domain understanding.