QA Engineers and Their Role in the SDLC
Written by: Gavneet Bhandal, Agile Test Engineer, TribalScale
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Ever heard of a Quality Assurance (QA) engineer and questioned what they are and what they do? Have you ever heard of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and wondered how QA engineers are involved in the process or even if they are involved in the SDLC at all? Well whatever your question is about QA engineers and the SDLC, or both, they will be answered here.
Hello, my name is Gavneet Bhandal, I am an Agile Test Engineer (these fancy terms will be understood by you after you finish reading this post) at TribalScale. TribalScale is pretty unique because we have our very own in-house QA team and run all our projects using SDLC in an Agile environment.
What is a Quality Assurance Engineer?
Quality Assurance Engineers (also known as a QA Engineer) are professionals who ensure product quality by developing and executing exploratory, manual and automated tests. While running these tests automatically or manually, the objective for QA engineers is to find bugs, issues with the logic, determine the usability in software products, and find a solution or fix these bugs. QA Engineers play a very crucial role in product development as they are responsible to ensure the product is unbreakable and ready for public release.
QA Engineers need to be able to communicate with everyone who is part of the software development processes like Product Managers, Designers, Developers, and more!
Quality Assurance is a very versatile career, and outside of software, QA Engineers can be found in almost every existing work industry like food, automotive, medical and much more!
What is the Software Development Life Cycle?
Now that we know what a QA Engineer is, let’s talk about the Software Development Life Cycle, also known as the SDLC. The SDLC is a process that the software industry uses to plan, design, develop and test software products, programs and services.
The SDLC process is very important for software companies to implement as it helps them produce high-quality and low-cost software in the shortest amount of time. This process is able to produce software products that are able to meet and exceed client expectations. Out of all the other alternative methods of production, SDLC is the best in terms of minimizing project risks and costs. It is up to each software company or organization to decide how they want to run the SDLC process, but the process typically consists of the following stages:
- Planning and criteria analysis — The stage where we identify the problem and receive input on how to make the current system better or how a new system should be made. We talk about resources, budgets, pros & cons, etc.
- Designing — The stage where the technical details are discussed. Taking an idea we thought of and bringing it to life through graphical designs, sketches and prototypes.
- Developing and building product — Taking the designs created in the previous stage and writing the code to build and implement the functionality.
- Testing — Testing the code to see if it is capable of following logic, testing the usability, finding the bugs and exhausting any possibility of errors in the code.
- Deploying — Pushing the built product into production and releasing it to the public for use.
- Maintaining — Product is fully released and in operation, but maintained through software updates, bug fixes, repairs, etc.
What does a QA Engineer do within SDLC?
Now that we know what QA Engineers are and what the SDLC is, let’s talk about the role of a QA Engineer in the SDLC. From the SDLC diagram shown above, we can see that the SDLC’s 4th stage is the testing phase before the final stages of deployment and maintenance. This emphasizes how important the testing phase is when creating and producing a product.
During the testing stage, QA Engineers ensure that the expectations of the client are met and that we are releasing a high quality product. If the testing phase is ignored or not done correctly, it will open a gap for errors and create an unsecured product which will cause us to lose money, credibility, sales and employee productivity.
Not being able to create a safe and secure product is not something to be tampered with due to the current vulnerability issues in tech. By having a high understanding of the business expectations, QA engineers are the ones to make the final call to approve the product or not.
How important is the QA role?
Two words: extremely important.
With QA engineers:
- Software companies save a lot of time by having QA engineers catch errors before pushing the product to a production environment.
- Software companies also save a lot of money as QA engineers are able to catch errors and send them back to developers to fix rather than fixing an error when fully released to the public.
- Clients are more likely to be confident with the quality products they receive from software companies knowing they have been tested correctly and vigorously.
- Software developers perform better because they are more focused on creating the best product rather than a product that just works, knowing that they have professional QA Engineers who will support them and catch errors.
- The QA team is able to re-establish expectations and goals of the client and product when testing a product.
- The QA team is capable of building a good reputation for a software company as the company will be known to create products that are unbreakable and of good quality.
- With having such success with QA, companies will earn more profit in the long run as they will have happy and loyal customers.
QA Engineers are the last, yet crucial, part of the SDLC, who are able to confirm whether a product is ready for release or not. Without them, we would not be able to create the best products that we are capable of building.
References
Gavneet is an Agile Test Engineer at TribalScale. She works with cross-functional teams to collaborate and work towards creating products. Alongside testing, she spends her time learning new automation tools and technologies. Outside of work, you can find her playing and watching basketball and volunteering in her community.
TribalScale is a global innovation firm that helps enterprises adapt and thrive in the digital era. We transform teams and processes, build best-in-class digital products, and create disruptive startups. Learn more about us on our website. Connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn & Facebook!
