What should be the goals of a quality assurance manager at the organisation level to excell in business and contribute in company growth?
This varies massively between different companies.
Organizational QA - For example HR processes and practices also need QA. Here the role is to help all team design and choose the right processes for themselves and assist them in applying them well.
Development practice QA - Its similar to above - Take for example Code reviews. The role would help developers put together code review practices, guide them in the decisions regarding when to use them and help them confirm that they apply the practices well. The same would apply to all development practices, this role rarely touches the product and is a supportive process and practice role for the team.
There is a variation on the above that gets a bit dysfunctional when the QA group rather than the team define best practice and also police that the practices are adhered to. I’d avoid this one.
Product QA - This one tends to have a bias towards testing activities and is also the most common one I see these days. It has grey areas though, like the code review example above is that in or out of the QA managers remit.
The following is normally the way I define things when I reduce the testing activity bias. This can be applied at organizational level, company OKR’s are also a good reference point to support data driven QA decisions.
"Quality and Quality assurance are owned by the entire team. Help the team choose and apply good practices that promote and accelerate quality results.
Always be on the lookout for opportunities to do things better. Leverage from good data to validate decisions. Value mistakes and learn from them. Anyone on the team can shout out a QA opportunity and the team as a group makes a quick decision on it.
We are all QA."
Sticking to the original roles and responsibilities of a quality assurance manager, there is also a managerial aspect of the job role that must be understood. Therefore, it is vital that quality assurance managers must keep a focus on collaboration and synchronization amongst the workforce. The QA managers must practice transparency at all levels and therefore take consideration of the following goals:
• Develop standard quality control policies
• Train the staff on QA process, policies, and standards
• To keep a check on quality control process and QA team
• Conduct timely audits on the QA documentation, workflow, and organizational process.