Role of QA Manager in Agile Project

What is the role of the QA Manager in an agile environment? Do we actually need QA Managers in Agile projects?

The role and responsibilities of QA Managers have changed a lot over the past few years, mainly due to a lot of organizations moving to agile development methodologies where there are clusters of Agile Teams working together to deliver business objectives.

Many QA Managers often feel confused about their functions and feel out of place when placed in an agile context, particularly when they have been in charge of handling a testing team and defining QA procedures for an organization.

No Testing Department

For starters, at a proper agile setup, there is no such thing as"Testing Department", where a group of testers are hauled together, usually away from the developers and managed by means of a Test Lead or Test Manager.

Also in an agile environment, there's not as much emphasis on heavy documentation such as detailed test plans, which is usually the job of the QA Manager to write these documents in traditional methods.

In Scrum, which will be a favourite agile development methodology, there are 3 main functions: Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Scrum Team. The Scrum Team is self-managing and made up of developers, designers and Writers and the staff itself is liable to provide high quality software.

QA Manager at Agile isn't needed to manage the trainee as well as the testing campaign, as in Agile testers become a part of the Scrum Team.

Qualities of a Good Agile Leader

No Duty

Gone are the days when the QA Manager was held accountable when there was a defect leaked to production. In Agile, everybody is liable and quality is everybody's responsibility.

When a production episode is encountered, everybody gathers together to see what went wrong and how it can be avoided in future.

There is not any place for QA Manager in Agile since it indirectly takes away team responsibility for QA that's the whole reason why good Scrum teams deliver higher quality. It is important to see that QA and so testing, is an inherent part of Agile development methodologies.

No Day-to-Day Management of Testers

In Agile, company priorities change frequently and the Scrum Team should adapt the changing priorities. It is virtually impractical to maintain with all the changes especially when there are numerous Scrum Teams at a large organization.

Being a Test Manager in an Agile environment could be isolating at times, particularly when the division is large, and also the amount of nimble teams is large.

It takes an ability to balance a lot of data, priorities, and tasks, across numerous areas. Stakeholder management and influence become key. Context changing comes as standard. Often it is not much fun.

More Developers Evaluation

In Agile groups, developers are invited to test their own code and to write adequate and effective unit tests to ensure the new code has no clear errors and to get notified quickly when something is broken.

When we have a good foundation of superior unit tests that we can rely upon, it eliminates the responsibility of individuals having to check for apparent mistakes; instead, they could concentrate more on exploratory testing and help with UAT which doesn't require extensive preparation and documentation.

Role of QA Manager at Agile

Even though the standard role and responsibilities of a QA Manager may not be seen as necessary from the Agile context, there are particular regions where QA Managers may add value.

A QA Manager in Agile should be an experienced aide to be able to give information on challenging situations. They have to understand how testing fits into an agile project.

The points covered on blog article Evaluation Manager in Agile from Katrina Clokie (aka Katrina the Tester) gives a good summary of the new role of QA Manager at Agile:

Facilitation of inter-team communicating across many agile projects within a company

Presenting an aggregate view of analyzing into the high-level management

Personal assistance, mentoring, and professional advancement for testers

Being an escalation point for testers

Budgeting or forecasting for testing as a service determined by organizational process

Other regions where QA Managers in Agile can add value are:

Be an advocate of QA through the organization.

Recruitment of QAs and Automation Engineers.

Providing technical expertise, e.g. proper utilization of test techniques in appropriate cases.

Strengthening the teams (Scrum Teams) implement and follow best practices to prevent flaws.

To summarize, the function of a QA Manager at Agile is more of a support, coaching, facilitating and consulting different QAs along with other team members and to ensure QA best practices are established and that calibre is baked directly from start.

I work as a Senior Testing Specialist at TestingXperts. I handled day-to-day operations for all aspects of software testing. With over 7 yrs of professional experience I know how to build strong connection.