The transformation of QA’s role in agile teams: from gatekeeper to quality coach

1. The fundamental differences between traditional QA vs agile QA

2. QA's role in Scrum ceremonies

• Assess testing effort

  The testing time of each User Story must be counted into Story Points

• Confirm acceptance criteria

  Ensure each Story has clear, testable Acceptance Criteria

• raise risks

  Which features have high technical risk and require more testing time

• Automated assessment

  Which new features are suitable for automation and how long will they take to build?

• What did I test yesterday and what problems were found?

  What did I test yesterday and what problems were found?

• What do you plan to test today?

  What do you plan to test today?

• Is there any Block (for example, waiting for development to fix bugs or test environment issues)

  Is there any Block (for example, waiting for development to fix bugs or test environment issues)

• Early warning: "This function can only be given to me for testing tomorrow, and the time will be very tight."

  Early warning: "This function can only be given to me for testing tomorrow, and the time will be very tight."

• Test coverage and quality report for this Sprint

  Test coverage and quality report for this Sprint

• Important bugs discovered and their impact

  Important bugs discovered and their impact

• New progress for automated testing

  New progress for automated testing

• Quality trend graph (number of bugs, severity distribution, etc.)

  Quality trend graph (number of bugs, severity distribution, etc.)

• Which bugs could have been discovered earlier

  Which bugs could have been discovered earlier

• What needs to be improved in the test environment?

  What needs to be improved in the test environment?

• Does the team’s Definition of Done need to be adjusted?

  Does the team’s Definition of Done need to be adjusted?

• What automated tests do Flaky Test need to fix?

  What automated tests do Flaky Test need to fix?

3. Definition of Done: The bottom line of quality

• Code passed Code Review

  Code passed Code Review

• The unit test passes and the coverage reaches the standard

  The unit test passes and the coverage reaches the standard

• Functional tests pass (manual or automated)

  Functional tests pass (manual or automated)

• No critical/major level unfixed bugs

  No critical/major level unfixed bugs

• File updated

  File updated

• Integration test passed

  Integration test passed

• No performance degradation (compared to baseline)

  No performance degradation (compared to baseline)

• Security scan passed

  Security scan passed

• Cross-browser/device testing completed

  Cross-browser/device testing completed

• Automated regression testing passed

  Automated regression testing passed

4. Collaboration model between QA and development

• advantage

  The lowest communication cost and the deepest understanding of the business

• shortcoming

  QA is easily isolated and lacks peer communication

• advantage

  Balancing embeddedness and professional growth

• shortcoming

  Dual return relationships may create priority conflicts

• advantage

  Highest sense of quality, no issues with getting past the wall

• shortcoming

  The team is required to have a high degree of testing literacy, and professional testing skills may be ignored.

5. Automation strategies for agile QA

• core business process

  Critical path to be confirmed for every release

• Frequent return function

  Mods that may be affected every Sprint

• data driven testing

  Test scenarios that require a large number of input combinations

• UI that is still changing frequently

  Once automated, it will need to be changed immediately because the maintenance cost is too high.

• One-time verification

  Scenarios that only need to be tested once are not worth investing in automation

• Tests requiring human judgment

  Subjective evaluation of visual beauty, user experience, etc.

6. Mentality adjustment for QA transformation

• From "finding bugs" to "preventing bugs"

  Your value is not how many bugs you find, but how many bugs you help the team avoid.

• From "independent control" to "collaboration and shared responsibility"

  Quality is the responsibility of the entire team, not QA alone.

• From "Perfectionism" to "Risk Orientation"

  It’s impossible to test all scenarios, learn to assess risks and focus on what’s important

• From "passive reception" to "active participation"

  Don’t wait for development and delivery to start, get involved from the requirements stage

7. FAQ