This article will discuss role of Quality Assurance in IT Industry.

Qualifications for a Quality Assurance Specialist:

• Experience in Quality Assurance in any industry
• Attitude toward Quality
• Software Development Experience (optional)

Responsibilities of Quality Assurance Specialist:

• Product Testing
• Validate Product Functionality and Quality

Quality assurance has been a very important job in manufacturing industries and software is no exception. Testing assumes very important function in Quality assurance of Software Products also. Companies recognize cost of defects is prohibitive and deploy resources to ensure quality of the product. Methods to ensure Software Quality continue to evolve and Internet is filled with material towards the same. Automation of Software Testing has been gaining popularity and specialists in Software Test automation have been evolving. In software development lifecycle testing consumes 30% of effort and is almost equal to development effort in the cycle. Dimension of testing has changed after evolution of Internet. Performance testing has assumed significance importance with Internet multiplying number of possible users for a website.

Challenges in the role:

• Testing is not considered a very important job compared to coding. But testing needs different skill set and attitude.
• Testers need to understand product functionality. An aptitude for grasping product functionality is needed.
• Testing needs lot of patience.
• Testing team gets into conflict with development team many times. Professional approach to ensure smooth functioning of Quality Assurance is needed.
• Testing should find innovative methods to break application functionality.
• Testers complain of getting into 'fault finding mission' towards everything. One cannot help being quality conscience keeper once they get into this role.

Tips to play an effective role as Quality Assurance Specialist:

• Understand application functionality
• Gather system requirements and prepare test plans and test cases.
• Establish a clear communication channel with development team
• Understand Automation Tools and use them.

Resources for Quality Assurance: http://www.qaforums.com, http://www.qalinks.com, and http://www.stqemagazine.com.

As critical roles (Developer, Functional Specialist, Quality Assurance) of Software Careers are covered in the 3 articles featured, next article onwards the focus will be moved to other career options. After all IT is not the only career option in the world. Give your comments and feedback by e-mail to cskishore@yahoo.com