Product Quality Assurance Specialist. Quality Assurance Systems Associate. Software QA Analyst. SQA Engineer. Software Tester. These are just some of the job titles available in the area of QA. This is a growing field, and one that is often overlooked as a great place to begin a career in IT.
Quality Assurance (QA) is the final checkpoint for most any product, whether it be software or hardware, or something non-tech. The QA function is to "beat up" on the final product, and ensure that it is operating properly, within specifications with no unusual behavior through a series of carefully planned and documented tests.
In the discipline of application software development and web design, the QA function is the last step in the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) before a new system is released to the customers. The Software Quality Assurance (SQA) specialist or analyst will look for "bugs" in the software, and document any inconsistent behavior. The findings will be turned over to programmers to correct the problem and release back into QA for another cycle. This continues until no more defects are detected by QA, at which time the product is officially "released".
The field of QA is fairly easy to enter. A Bachelor's degree is often recommended, but not always required. Many companies prefer 1-3 years experience in software development or testing, but will accept an equivalent combination of education, training and experience. There are also QA certifications available from http://www.qaiusa.com/index.html.
There are many opportunities to be found in QA if you're just starting out in the IT field. The most important attributes for someone starting out in QA are not technical, but in fact more about your personality characteristics. To enjoy success in QA, you need to be very detail-oriented, have good communications skills, enjoy testing new software and finding bugs, and have good problem-solving skills.
Official job duties and responsibilities of the SQA Analyst/Specialist/Engineer are typically to ensure quality and minimize defects of internally developed software applications through the execution of manual and automated system test strategies, procedures and plans. This may include (1) white and black box testing, (2) functional, regression and performance tests, (3) analyze and verify product requirements and design specs, (4) participate in code reviews, and (5) verification of fixed bugs.
In the early days of QA testing, these tasks were all done manually in a very time-consuming process. Today, there are many automated test tools which streamline the process and make for a more efficient process. This also means that if you want to be in QA, you are going to have learn one of the "big 3" automated test environments: (1) Silk, (2) WinRunner, or (3) Rational SQA Robot (there are others, but these are the most popular). Most of these tools utilize some kind of scripting language, so if you are familiar with C/C++, Perl or Java, you will pick it up quickly. You may also be required to set up "test data" and validate results, so familiarity with SQL will also be helpful.
The salary range for an analyst in QA is highly dependent on geography. In San Jose/San Francisco, the range is $70,000-$90,000 and $50,000-$70,000 in Colorado, both with several years experience. Advancement opportunities also exist in the QA field, usually to senior analyst then team leader, eventually leading to management (will likely require a degree and significant number of years experience).
Quality Assurance is an exciting place to be, and a great way to get into an IT career. If you want a challenging position and opportunities to learn new software, QA may be the place for you.
Recommended Reading
The Handbook of Software Quality Assurance
Customer Oriented Software Quality Assurance
Fundamental Concepts for the Software Quality Engineer
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