“Quality Assurance” is a concept/ subject that plays a crucial role in matching the customer’s expectations on the outcome and making the process more efficient. A Quality Assurance Analyst is someone who analyzes and gives the surety that the product is in good condition. The priority in this concept always goes to the clients. It all depends on them and their needs. The product will be developed according to the instructions by the clients. The investment and communication are the two factors that help in keeping up with the commitment. When it comes to the behavior of a QA Analyst. It must always include patience and skills. Good grip on software testing, verification and validation, reviewing a product are some of the factors in technical skills.
Understanding the situation, respect to the higher authorities, proper communication with the clients, contacting the managers for help are some of the general skills that a analyst must have.
Requirements and Qualification
A bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering with specific interest in the quality management of software, a few projects related to the building of the quality and minimum experience in the work (can be internships or self made projects). The requirements include basic programming and problem solving skills.
Learning and getting updated with the software testing is crucial part. We need to understand and implement them in the process, it makes the project to be done before deadline and gives more time for validation of the project. We need to understand that the requirements keeps on changing depending on the client’s needs and the QA analyst must be in a place to adapt that and go with the flow of customer’s requests.
The job of quality analyst is very small part of the whole procedure when compared to the work done by the developers and managers.
Practices to keep in mind
● Making a clear plan before starting the process in the project.
● Conducting meetings with the clients and the developers on the regular basis. ● Reviewing more than once for a better result.
● Setting goals which can work in outcome in a long term
● Involving and communicating with the colleagues for better understanding of the work. ● Thinking from the client’s perspective
● Having a plan A and plan B in which plan B will work as a backup if plan A fails. This will reduce the chance of destruction and maintain stability.
Goals
Goals are the expected outcomes in the project. Setting goals will give us an idea of what to do and what to work on. Keeping the given time in mind, we start working on the project. It tells us how many members to involve in the team and the kind of work must be assigned to them. The
investments that are invested for quality assurance in the project gives the weightage of the access to the analysts.
Daily meetings and reports
The daily updates in a daily meeting will help the team in knowing where they are and the time period it will take for reaching their goals/ destination. The daily reports are the noted information of the meetings and the discussions on a paper. They will be documented and will be stored till the end to understand the work of each individual. These reports can be shared to investors and the clients to help them with the stages in the project. The trail reports will also be shared. The QA analyst must be capable of answering any kind of questions that the client or developer asks.
Selenium
Selenium is a popular tool used by the QA analysts. This testing platform will make it more flexible to work. We use this tool, when the manual testing is not enough and when we need more than just a basic testing. Selenium supports various programming languages like c, c++, python and java. It is the go-to tool for automation testing for web applications. We can use this in most of the devices and it also gets the support in IOS. Sometimes, few organizations hire employees based on their selenium skills. The accuracy in the participation on selenium will help an analyst to get a better job.
SDLC
The whole process is part of the software development life cycle (SDLC). We completely depend on the stages in the life cycle. The QA analyst is part of the beginning stages, middle stages and the end stages. We also consider CMM (capacity maturity model) in the work, to know about the stages of optimisation and quantitative management. The quality assurance is part of almost all six stages in software development life cycle like analysis, planning, managing and implementing. The SDLC had no QA part in the past, but with the development over years, it got its own light for balancing the quality.
QA analyst salary
As this field is very specific and rare, the chances of getting a good payout is high. An average QA analyst can earn approximately $72000/year. This number is sometimes high when you compare it with an ordinary engineer or developer. It is all the experience and skills that will help an analyst to get a good salary from the organization. As time passes, the QA analyst can get promoted and become a manager and later lead software specialist. The promotion comes with major responsibilities, hikes and respect. When it comes to a freelancer who is a quality assurance analyst, it depends on his/her skills and contacts. It is hard to move to another field when you enter into this particular one, but as you see it is just hard, not impossible. It has its own share of risks and higher commitments. The benefits and family security from the organization to a QA analyst will be same as it is for other employees in the company.
So, I conclude that to become a quality assurance analyst, A person must have high interest and skills in the field. The communication, solving problems and finding the solutions will forever remain as the key for a successful QA analyst.
