This short guide provides a structured framework and practical advice for building a rock-solid, end-to-end (not to be confused with the test layer) QA architecture in an organization.
This handbook is designed to assist you, whether you are beginning to develop your QA processes, or you're seeking to enhance your current practices, by outlining the key steps and important factors to consider.
Note: This is not a QA personal growth roadmap type handbook. For that, please refer to the rather widely used QA roadmap for topics that can be improved in terms of personal QA growth.
Before exploring the details, it’s essential to understand a key principle: Quality is not just the responsibility of the QA team. Instead, it is a shared responsibility that involves everyone who is part of the software development process, from conception to deployment and monitoring. This means that all teams and individuals play a role in ensuring that the products we create are of high quality.
The QA team has a vital role in this process. They are responsible for creating processes to assure that quality standards are higher, modifying them, deleting unnecessary steps, demonstrating best practices, and teaching others about quality standards. Their expertise helps guide everyone in maintaining high-quality work.
This handbook is here to help you build a culture that prioritizes quality. We want to empower each person to take part in delivering great products. By working together and focusing on quality, we can achieve better results and create software that meets the needs of our users.
We will explore the creation of a solid QA architecture through four interconnected pillars:
- Culture Foundation: Establishing a quality culture; fostering a quality-first mindset and developing essential planning processes to support it.
- Core Infrastructure: Implementing continuous deployments, continuous monitoring, and early issue detection; building a robust infrastructure for ongoing monitoring, proactive issue identification, and ensuring security.
- Automations: Scaling confidence by deploying comprehensive automated processes and tests to guarantee process and code quality, functionality, and performance.
- Exploratory and Manual Testing: Leveraging human insight, creativity, and user feedback to identify issues and enhance the overall user experience.
- Go to Section 1: Culture Foundation - cultivating a quality culture
- Go to Section 2: Core Infrastructure - monitoring and early detection
- Go to Section 3: Automations - building confidence at scale
- Go to Section 4: Exploratory and Manual Testing - the human touch
Your contributions to this handbook are highly appreciated. To ensure consistency and readability, we created a set of guidelines. Please refer to the Contribution and style guidelines for more details.
This handbook is licensed under the MIT License. Feel free to use, share, and modify it according to your needs.