This post is the second article for Day 10 of Mercari Advent Calendar 2024, brought to you by @Udit, an Engineering Manager (QA) at Mercari.
This blog is based on my recent presentation at the inaugural edition of Tokyo Test Fest (TTF) 2024 and is also inspired by quality leaders and speakers from around the world.
Quality Consultant
Quality Consultant, sometimes being an abstract term, allows you to act as a Quality Consultant or architect across the organization, projects, teams, domains, etc.
Quality Consultant, Quality Advocates, Test Architects, or Quality Experts: Different companies follow different nomenclature, but mainly surround similar skill sets.
Few companies have such a designation; for the rest, it is an implicit part of Senior QA roles. The idea of this blog is to give you insight into what works and what doesn’t work when you would like to evolve yourself as a great Quality Consultant.
How did I become a Quality Consultant?
I am not a Quality Consultant by designation, but I play that role in my day-to-day work life.
I started as a developer, then evolved into testing and automation. I learned about different frameworks and programming languages, automation across various layers and platforms, and gained experience in different types of projects.
Quality Consultant Role & Skillset
The Quality Consultant role and focus areas differ from company to company, between product and service industries, and whether you are acting as an external or internal consultant, along with a common set of necessary skills which plays a key role.
Potential Career Paths
Here are some potential career paths and routes that can help you evolve as a Quality Consultant within your organization by enhancing your skills and capabilities, and by taking on a larger role or making a bigger impact beyond your existing position.
The "+" indicates the skills you may need to elevate to move from one position to another.
The "-" indicates less emphasis on those skills (though you still need to be aware of them) and instead focuses on strengthening your existing skills and focus areas.
Test Pyramids
Now, as a Quality Consultant working on any new or existing project, it’s important to evaluate the current state of the test pyramid and try to implement one that is desired or close to desired for long-term effectiveness and advancement.
When Projects Go Wrong
The projects usually go wrong when there is more coverage at UI level but less at Unit level, or when there is decent coverage at both UI and Unit level, but almost no coverage at Service level.
When Projects Go Really Wrong
This is again another and very common example when the projects go really wrong, and should be avoided if you are responsible for Quality for such projects.
The Pyramid & Shift-Left
In the usual test pyramid, moving testing early—i.e., moving down in the pyramid—helps achieve faster, easier, and cost-effective testing.
Agile Test Automation Pyramid
Next is the agile representation of the test pyramid across the UI, Service, and Unit layers, where each layer has its own significance in testing. For example, UI layer represents E2E user journeys or critical user flows, Service layer include testing with both real and mocked data, and Unit layer include unit tests.
Now one of the idea is to break down the middle service layer into API, Contract and Component level of testing.
UI & API testing can cover system integration testing, real use cases close to Production
Contract testing is a software testing methodology that tests the interactions between different microservices or software components based on the contracts between them. In contract testing, each service or component is given a contract, which defines how to work with the service and which responses to accept.
Component testing validates the components in isolation, also known as integration testing.
The above figure represents the ideal types of automated test suites that can be targeted across each layer.
Transitioning to SDET and/or Quality Consultant
Things to remember:
It’s important to focus on skill diversification, learn the implementation of test pyramids, embrace shift-left testing and pipeline integration, and be selective while also developing the soft skills necessary for better communication across the organization.
Issues like silos or QA as after thought, heavy reliance on manual testing, redundant execution of regression tests, and inconsistent frameworks can lead to quality concerns, maintenance and scalability problems.
Thank you for reading! Embark on an exciting journey with us to revolutionize the way we approach quality and become a valued contributor at Mercari!
