In my short career in Quality Assurance, I had a chance to be both a lead QA analyst on a project, and just a regular analyst. So, when asked to contrast the two positions, I’m glad to say that I have couple of opinions of my own. So, let’s dive right into it.

A QA lead, on a project, has to see the big picture; needs to understand the goals of both the project and of the business. It’s easy enough to hire several QA people to come in and test the application before releasing it. They will go through test cases, and find some bugs. However, if the analyst just goes through assigned test cases without ever questioning why the test case was written in the first place, why certain business logic acts certain ways; the analyst will never be truly effective.

Majority of critical bugs that I’ve found over the years, have been found far off the beaten path. And the only reason I ventured into the wilderness of the application was because I knew the application and the business by heart. Furthermore, small accidental changes in the business flow of the app were sometimes missed by the developers, customers, and QAs, but were brought up to attention due to the understanding of the business rules. It is critical for the QA lead to know all the rules of the game because he becomes the point of reference for the rest of the team.

With responsibility comes power, and with power comes even more responsibility. A marking of a good QA is the dedication to the quality of the product; this is especially true for the lead. She has to answer to the quality of the product first, customers and bosses next. This position is tough to defend at first, especially when there is so much pressure just to “ship it.” But you have to be especially firm here, if the application is not fully tested, you have to push back the release. If the deadlines cannot be moved, you have to negotiate the scope down to a manageable size. It is unethical to release code that has not been tested!

But the customer is always right, and shouldn’t the customer be always first? Yes, that is true, but in QA universe putting the quality of the product above everything else is putting the customer first. In this hierarchy, the customer always wins, never having to deal with frustration of buggy software and data corruption. This in turn generates more revenue for the company, and makes your managers happy. A strong QA lead should have enough freedom and courage to pushback when things get out of hand, and raise issues when things are unreasonable; just like the project managers do when they see a problem.

Creativity plays a major role in the QA lead’s daily life. Anyone can be hired to follow rules and procedures without giving anything a second thought. But it’s the lead’s job to give direction to people around, on how to approach different tasks and problems. An individual who is not capable of thinking on his feet, and quickly adjusting to the new situation will not lead a successful team. This is mostly due to the fact that procedures and plans are good on paper, but nothing ever goes according to plan. In true spirit of agile development, the lead needs to be steady but easily adjustable depending on the situation.

There should never be walls between leads and analysts. Just because you have a higher title on the project, does not mean you are no longer required to be a QA. A lead is not a manager who gives directions and directives, but someone who has more experience, and in turn shares the experience with the team, leading by example. One should never act as if some assignments are below his status, but has to be equal to everyone.

The skills I’ve mentioned above are not only unique to the QA lead role. I firmly believe that everyone on the team should posses these skills. It is not as necessary for the analyst to have all these abilities from day one, but they are critical for someone in the leading role. However, the final skill that a lead needs to have, is the ability propagate these values to everyone on the team. The lead needs to treat all the members of the team as future leaders, teaching them all the skills they will need for their own teams.

In conclusion, I was asked to show some differences between QA leads, and regular QA analyst. But to be honest I don’t think there should be many. Just because the lead has the most responsibility for the project, does not mean that everyone should not feel responsible for it. And just because the lead is expected to be a teacher and a leader to his team, does not mean that other teammates cannot teach.