Test smart: how to stay resilient if you are QA?

In the hectic IT, you might run into bizarre job offers where QA is combined with other areas. Yet this will not undermine the role of QA Specialists in the long run.

Published in

UX Collective

6 min readSep 12, 2024

A funny owl stands in front of the endocrinologist/ophthalmologist office. — “Hmm…” — an Owl says.

As someone actively looking for new adventures (jobs) in quality assurance, I came across an interesting phenomenon. But first, let me ask you one random question. Would you visit a doctor if their title was “endocrinologist/ophthalmologist”? To my mind, the “/” in the title would seem suspicious. Is this person qualified to perform their duties well enough for specialists from different medical areas? Frankly, I would run away from such a doctor.

The job market problem looks similar. QA as a speciality is still underestimated in the hectic IT world. So if you run into a job post saying “UX Designer/Tester” “Tester/Customer Support Agent”, or “Software Engineer/Tester”, you already know that it is likely that the offering company has QA on a low-priority list in their business strategy. And there are multiple reasons for that. First, there might be a wish to save by hiring one person to cover two roles. The second reason might lie in the general unawareness of QA’s role and the complexity of QA methodology.

Is multitasking so bad?

As a multitasking person, you might grab the “slash” offer. Just be ready to switch often between the roles. As someone who had a brief experience juggling between QA and customer support roles, I must admit that this can be mentally challenging and might not leave room for deeper self-development in either field.

Yet if you wish to develop professionally, you need to gain new knowledge and thus level up your expertise. This requires many hours of dedication to learning about a specific field. Can you get new knowledge efficiently by juggling two roles at once? Well, it will be a challenge. In the long run, this may also lead to burnout.

QA awareness

If we look at the issue from an organisational point, the average awareness of quality assurance varies in the IT market. Throughout my experience, I have met individuals from the IT field who needed to learn what QA is. And by the way, this was the turning point that pushed me to write the stories here, on Medium. In my very first story from the Test Smart cycle, I tried to explain why it is vital to establish a QA culture (and preferably a dedicated QA role) in your team.

QA is much more than just software testing. It resonates a lot with the idea of Ben Byrne:

“One of the primary issues with labelling QA team members as “testers” is that it significantly narrows the scope of their responsibilities in the eyes of others. Testing, while an essential part of their work, is only one aspect of what QA professionals do. These individuals contribute throughout the software development process, from requirement analysis to design, implementation, and ongoing maintenance. By calling them “testers,” we overlook their involvement in these other critical stages, thus undermining the value they bring to the development process. This terminology pigeonholes their role and fails to recognize their skill sets and contributions.”

A funny big-eyed owl — A great QA should have an owl's eye. You are supposed to be observing, questioning, analytical and precise in your job.

Following an old bad habit, I’ll continue to use the word tester. Yet, there should be an awareness that the Tester’s job is not just testing as it is but much more: analysis of user stories, reviewing prototypes, scripting test cases, monitoring of system’s behaviour, research of user’s feedback, maintenance of tools for testing and test management, and so on.

Generalists vs specialists

From the early days of Agile, the leaders of the IT field believed all team members should be generalists. Everyone should be able to both code and test. The reality is that most people can’t be good at multiple roles — they can’t learn everything well.

An interesting observation was made by the pioneers of agile testing Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin:

“As software systems have grown more complex, we’ve seen a growing need for team members with deep, specialized skills. Consider the many specialized testing activities needed today, such as security, performance, accessibility, usability, reliability. And yet, over the years, more and more organizations have decided they don’t need testers. When we’ve observed teams without testing specialists, we see big gaps in the testing, many quality attributes being ignored.”

QA Engineers may be generalists in their professional interests. For instance, a Tester who learns how to automate recurring end-to-end tests gains Developer skills; some Testers who are good in performance and load testing may have keen eyes for usability testing, too. There is nothing wrong with that. Instead, a “t-shaped” specialist would be very welcome in every team.

But would a good QA “steal the bread” from Designers or Developers and play two instruments in one orchestra (team)? I don’t think so. At least, all the great QA people I know focus on their specific tasks that help the teams enhance the quality of digital products.

If you are a Product Owner, you should not be a one-man band responsible for the quality. It is important to assess how the quality of your product is treated by the whole team: which functional requirements and quality attributes are covered, and who handles what. At the same time, is there a dedicated person who takes care of the testing strategy and keeps an eye on using the proper validation methods and tools? If not, is there any space for improvement? Perhaps, your team and you need someone who would be an engine of testing efforts and connecting the team over the common goal — a refined product quality.

For Developers, it is good to think about actual testing strategy. Is there everything in the place? Or there is less and less time for testing and you rely on a list of automated checks that give the green light to ship the product? This could be a typical situation in a team that misses a QA person. In these teams, QA tasks are usually distributed among the developers, testing is done superficially and perceived as an additional burden on the top of development tasks. Sit together with your team and think whether there is anything to change.

UX Designers should also be careful when overloading themselves with QA tasks. I admit UX Designers are competent enough to facilitate user testing sessions. However, I doubt that the Designer who developed the product’s prototypes is unbiased in evaluating the usability of the final product. Here, it is wise to involve the whole team in evaluating UX. Yet having a dedicated QA person helps you get to the results faster. QA Specialists can give you feedback on freshly baked prototypes from the user’s perspective. Consequently, you save time (your company saves money) on remaking the flows.

As the previously booming IT market comes to some retention point, the hiring “slash” trend becomes more visible on LinkedIn and other platforms. Is it smart and cost-efficient? Well, I would argue.

The ultimately important thing is to keep sharing knowledge about the role of QA in the constantly changing digital world. No matter how, AI-based solutions (as useful tools in testing practice) would hardly replace meticulous, observing, and empathetic human beings who choose to devote themselves to quality assurance and end-user needs.

Nevertheless, in the last months, I concluded that I’d love to continue my career as an independent QA Specialist. Keep calm and stay resilient.

You may check my LinkedIn page if you feel like connecting with me or are curious about my background. I’m ready to communicate with teams looking for guidance and help in enhancing product quality and testing.

Illustrations: by me

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