What is a QA Engineer and why does the world need them?

QA Engineer plays a fundamental in any IT endeavour.
This is what they do and why every team should have one.

Poor planning, ambiguous objectives, high expectations, too ambitious deadlines, and an undefined scope. These are only a few of the major reasons why up to 70% of IT initiatives fail. But when a team is able to recognize not only the ideal result but the roadblocks that may impede it, it will be better equipped to correct the trajectory of a faltering project. All part of a QA (or Quality Assurance) Engineer’s day. What will you learn?

• What is a QA Engineer?
• What are the skills of a QA Engineer?
• Why and when do you need a QA Engineer on your team?
• Near Partner, the QA Engineers team you need to evolve

What is a QA Engineer?

Nobody is perfect, but technology must be. In short, a QA Engineer assures the quality of a project by monitoring each stage of its development. Since requirement validation, test planning, scripting and execution, bug reporting and fix validation.

Besides that, QA Engineers are also responsible for defining the tests that will detect technical flaws, such as the identification of bugs, while suggesting changes so that the product complies with quality standards.

In practice, Quality Engineers create procedures for programmers to follow, run automated and manual test scripts, implement automated tests and perform compatibility tests with other programs, systems or networks. That is when they are not busy documenting and reporting software bugs or suggesting additional features that minimize problems, making the project more efficient and easier to use.

Thus, a QA Engineer has a preventive strategic attitude, searching for contradictory or unclear requirements, anticipating problems to avoid or resolve them more quickly. More than just checking if a product works, they predict what happens if the product is not properly used, if the power fails, if an unauthorized user gains access, or if ten thousand users log in at the same time.

What are the skills of a QA Engineer?

A successful QA Engineer adds crucial hard and soft skills to any team. They master programming languages ​​such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP to help them run automated test scripts. SQL, the most used language to manage databases and structured data, makes it easier for a QA Engineer to understand and query data. This skill also allows clearer and more efficient communication with the development team.

Also, Agile testing allows QA Engineers to foresee issues as early as possible, write and execute test cases, and uncover any gaps. It is essential that QA Engineers divide the project into iterative stages, add focus to the development process, and provide rapid, continuous feedback. Agile QA Engineers deliver working software earlier, anticipate change, provide better estimates, and allow ongoing corrections.

And since almost everything is mobile, and mobile development has a particular set of considerations. So, it is essential that a QA Engineer keeps track of the most suitable access technologies for web and mobile devices, in order to plan testing sequences in different environments.

But there’s more to a QA Engineer than technical skills. Since it is part of their role to mediate managers, customers, and developers, analyse and report problems, it is important that the QA Engineer has communication skills. By doing so, they prevent interferences and blockages in the project, and ensure that the entire team is aligned.

Why and when do you need a Qa Engineer on your team?

Having QA Engineers on your software development team can help ensure successful software projects, from a market as well as technical perspective.

Business requirements

A QA Engineer steps in right at the start of the project, when the business requirements are being decided. At this stage, the fundamental question to ask is “What will this feature allow us to do that we can not do yet?” A Quality Engineer then helps to analyse the integration and feasibility of requirements, and assess which solutions work and which don’t. Basically, QA Engineers validate whether the product makes sense for users and the market.

Testing

The testing strategy is defined by QA Engineers, which includes an estimation of time and effort for each stage of the project. A QA Engineer streamlines the testing process and ensures that it runs quickly and efficiently, without unexpected obstacles and contingencies. The QA Engineer also configures the environment where the tests will take place, to verify that the software is free of bugs and that it works according to the initial requirements. If problems are detected, it is up to the QA Engineer to do the respective documentation to ensure quick fixes.

Monitoring

When working on the same project for a long time, attachments gro deep, leading programmers to cling to the final result in such a way that they ignore minor flaws and bugs. A QA Engineer brings an objective viewpoint to the project, with a neutral, impartial, and detailed review of functions and failures.

In short, a project must be consistent and reliable enough to appear, in the eyes of the client, as if it was done by just one person. Although many people are involved in the work, a QA Engineer is the unifying element that gives cohesion to the different parts of the project.

Near Partner, the QA Engineers team you need to evolve

The world is constantly evolving, and the mindset, skill set, and work method need to step it up. At Near Partner, we’re a cohesive team of skilled software engineers with several areas of expertise. We’re ready to support you on your next step, providing you with error-free software for the entire organization. Get in touch!