Quality Assurance is no longer confined to writing test cases and detecting bugs. To really make a difference, we QA professionals need to work as strategic partners. Instead of just checking for problems, we need to work closely with everyoneādevelopers, designers, and product managersāto prevent issues before they happen. How do you think we as QAās can add value to our team/company??
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Thatās so true but it has been like this for a longwhile but not every company implements this just yet Iāve noticed. People are still a bit āscepticā about the QA role and what it does, there are often people who still think we just click buttons.
What kind of answer are you looking for because this can go realllllly broad or are you more looking for a story?
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Well the question stems from my conversations with other testers I know. Most of them say that the testers job stops after a feature is released to the PROD. I respectfully have to disagree as I believe thereās much more we can bring to the table after a feature is released. Like putting some monitoring and observability in place. We can gather real time insights and data on how the user is interacting with your application. We can monitor disk, CPU utilizations. We can put synthetics in place and run against multiple zones. These are few things I do that adds value to the team. So, want to know what other things can we do testers that can add value to the team.
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Ok makes sense, this is going to be a big list 
Iāll start with some less knowns but things I also practiced:
- Threat Modeling
- Chaos Engineering
- Mutation Testing
- Anomaly Detection
- Testing of Architecture (like residuality theory)
- You can practice Data Quality across the company
Something like this?
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It depends on what sort of tester someone is and their relationship to their company.
I consider testing to be the critical evaluation of anything. I feel like I can test whatever is put in front of me. Non-product things that might benefit from testing in a company include design ideas and documents, requirements and requirements documents, processes, truth statements about the product, CVs, the product as itās being built (pairing), and the testing itself (schedule, deliverables, coverage, techniquesā¦)
There are also product things that benefit from testing beyond checks for its capability. The HTSM mentions reliability, usability, charisma, security, scalability, compatibility, performance, installability and development.
Then thereās testing-related ideas and concepts like testing advocacy, bug advocacy, mentoring, training, debriefs and maintaining relationships and morale.
When and where to apply these is also part of the value we can provide.
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Thanks for the insights. Totally agree, we can definitely add value to the designs, thinking from the usability point of view and also advocating for consistency across the board. We can also advocate for testability (did we make a certain feature testable, from both infrastructure and data point of view). Risk assessment is another area I very keenly follow while grooming and story pointing.
Iāve ever been a PQA(Process Quality Assurance) in a IPD(Integrated Product Development) pattern project. PQA stands the same position as PO(Product Owner) who are the two core members of a IPD project. A PQA participates in the whole lifecycle of project to make sure the quality assurance in each phases not only for product quality but also for quality of any phases deliverables and documents. He/She must set up the quality plan with clarified quality goals and involve every members to contribute efforts for quality. So I believe PQA is really a Strategic Partner of PO in delivering high-quality solutions.
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