Responsibilities of lead test automation architects

Software Quality Assurance Leaders and QA Automation Architects are in high demand by the work fields of technology, hospitality, financial, advertising, and gaming. Recruiters always look for these professions as they are highly in demand all over the world. They are the workers who cross-check the product in every stage of the software development life cycle based on the requirements of the project and standards of software testing by following the ISTQB. They will lead testing as early as possible including the planning stage using their experiences and practices of the company.

Responsibilities of lead test automation architects 

A highly skilled QA with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or equivalent, detail-oriented, advanced in written and verbal communication, very good in soft skills, a certificate in International Software Testing Qualification Board, managerial experience in leading a team and technical skills such as high understanding in troubleshooting computer hardware and software like TCP/IP, HTTP, DNS, debugging, coding, and designing test frameworks are more likely to get the jobs easily.

The workers are normally involved in more advanced and technical roles that require knowledge in writing of the test plan, work estimation, developing custom testing programs for large/complex projects, and integrating with helpful technologies such as DevOps to make the testing more efficient and fast. There are many types of software quality assurance roles that are needed in every tech project. They could be Lead QA, QA Staff, and QA Automation Architects. All the three positions can be done by an individual except if the testing task is too large it needs to be performed by multiple people with different skill sets in the QA department to catch up with the testing deadlines. 

The QA team

The role of the Lead QA is to supervise and manage the QA team in the project. This requires problem solving skills that will help team members on guiding them about how to efficiently do testing. In some instances that there is a dispute between team members we have to make sure that this is resolved. We can provide solutions by giving right support and advice to the people with equal treatment to every member. Giving team motivation to apply the right attitude is highly encouraged. This will help the project to be successful as the team will be happily working on the quality of the product. The Lead QA should make sure that the team understands the requirements, wireframes, project design, and expectations. This can be done by joining the client meetings, asking questions about the project to the stakeholders, and to the developers. This will enable us to write all important details in the test plan. The Test Plan is required for every project as this is the basis of the testing strategy and activities. The document is highly critical to make sure every test is in accordance with the Project Requirements.

Setting up the QA test management tool such as Jira or Testlink is part of the job. This is needed by the team to write test cases and be able to have the environment on providing the right estimated effort and testing tasks. This will identify that work is not duplicated by other people. Informing the team about the timelines and deliverables will set awareness to the group about the testing deadlines. Once the team has completed the test cases and the automation framework the QA lead reviews and approves them as peer review is crucial before initiating any testing efforts. Providing training and process improvements to the team is essential. This will help the members to up-skill their knowledge by identifying the weaknesses and strengths of every person in order for us to know what improvements are needed on each team member to reach their next career goal. We can do this by sharing our knowledge and experiences from the past years and the use of modern testing tools such as Selenium and Appium.

Tracking defects must be done on a daily basis. This will assure that bugs are closed when they are fixed. Good collaboration with the software engineers and the QA holds an important key. This will help the identified bugs being bug triaged faster. Project reporting to the Project Manager and QA Manager is one of the big responsibilities of the Lead QA by sending it daily, weekly and monthly using company required reporting documents that will be useful inputs for project analysis of the Project Development team. Successful deployment of the product is essential. This will lead customers to be satisfied as they will be able to experience the product.

The tester

The responsibilities of the QA Staff is to set up the test environment, write test cases, run manual testing which will find bugs and edge cases of the software in every development stage as well reporting to the QA Lead. The QA must understand how to troubleshoot a computer and the software to determine the root cause of the bug. This can be done by reading the logfile and investigating the issue thoroughly as well as making sure that the defect is reproducible. The bug report must have ID, Title, Description, Steps to Reproduce, Actual, Expected, Screenshots, Videos, Logs, Severity, Priority, and Assigned To. Retesting is initiated once the bug is fixed. ISTQB knowledge in testing including the testing practices of the company are important. This will verify that the testing activities are following the QA standards. By covering all the manual tests, this will help the QA team to make sure the product is working as expected. The test case consists of ID, Title, Description, Specification, Prerequisites, Steps, Test Data, Expected, Actual, and Result. 

The software development engineer in test

The QA Automation Architect is not a common role. We are responsible of automating the testing process using a programming language such Javascript, C#, Java or Python. We should be automating almost everything that can be automated from UI, Visual Regression, API, Database, Security, Performance and the Command Line Interface to save time and money. The test automation will easily detect bugs due to changes of the software. We always create a tailored testing framework that will be used in the project and for the automation team. This is because not all projects are designed and developed similarly in every company. One of our duties is to give guidance and mentorship to the QA Staff and QA automation team. In this way we can help them with any blockers and skills improvement.

We can work on multiple projects, do code review and check the coding standards. Unit tests should not be a problem for this role when reviewing the code. We have a deep understanding of programming softwares and technology. By standard procedure we ask peer review to test lead and software developers. As they have a deep understanding of the project and the system. When the software becomes rich in features any changes that are made by the software engineers that caused the defect can be easily detected by running the automated test on a daily basis. The process of the test automation can be automated with the use of DevOps technologies such as Github as version control, Circle CI for continuous integration deployment, and Google Cloud for cloud environments.

Documentations needed by QA

Project requirement is one of the documentation needed to build the application. This is based on the client's needs and ideas to create their dream product. This will also determine the needed tools, languages, frameworks and manpower to calculate the probable cost of the project. Normally everyone in the project development team such as the Client, Managers, QA and the Developers are involved in the earliest stage of the development as well as the writing of the project requirements as this can help detect the possible limitations and bugs. By the project plan we can identify the timeline of every feature that is going to be developed so that the project team will deliver the product based on the timelines and agreement. The QA Lead will create the test plan to know the test estimation, objectives, testing tools, automation requirements, and the test environment. This will help the QA members to understand more about the project and their responsibilities in every stage of the software testing life cycle. Most of the time, the project development team is following the software development life cycle such as agile methodology. With the use of Jira, a project management tool and the use of story points on every assigned task so that the manager can estimate accurate work loads in every sprint. In this way the deliverables will be monitored correctly. 

The purpose of lead test automation architects

As a Lead QA Automation Architect I can do the project as an Individual and work on the three roles but as the company grows there will be more projects that require quality assurance engineers with background in leading a team, testing and test automation. This is the time when the company needs to hire more QA people to work on every project. As an experienced employee we manage the new hires and teach them about the technologies of the company so that they will learn faster in the process and be an effective team member.

More often, companies want to work with people in the same country due to information security. All tests should cover integration testing, functional testing, and non functional testing on every project activity. Following the specification of dynamic testing that covers black box, gray box, white box, experienced based, positive and negative tests under the static testing technique. Most of the time things can easily be done in manual testing but in the long run as the application becomes bigger this becomes costly to test because it is taking so much effort and time. This is why the test automation gets involved in order to test everything on a daily basis to detect defects due to code changes. The Lead QA, QA and the QA Automation Architect are always in demand jobs as technology is evolving fast.

As of now, Augmented Reality and the Metaverse are possible in the field of medicine, construction, aerospace education and workspaces for us to be productive and help humanity to be smarter in life. This will help people to train their skills faster and be educated by experiencing a detailed view of the study. For example using Oculus Quest by Meta you can examine the body parts of the human being or car parts of a vehicle. All of these new technologies require software quality assurance and should be completed within a couple of years because technology changes every three years.