Here are a few I heard, read and noticed. Can you add to them, or have your own stories?
QE is just testing rebranded
Lack of management or others’ buy-in because they don’t understand what the difference is
Focusing on one thing, like automation
Ignoring quality characteristics (non-functional) requirements
Lack of collaboration and communication across roles
What harm have you seen if they are left unchallenged?
Note: This is research for the upcoming Software Quality Engineering Certificate. Your comments and stories may be used with accreditation.
“QE is a technical role only.”
I believe it’s as much about communication and critical thinking as it is about coding. The strongest QEs I’ve worked with are those who can connect technical depth with human insight — identifying risks, gaps, and shared understanding.
“AI will replace QA/QE roles.”
I see it differently. Those who learn to use AI effectively will reshape QE practices, not lose relevance. In my team, we’ve used AI to enhance analysis and feedback loops — and it’s improving collaboration rather than replacing it.
What about you? Have you seen any of these in your orgs, or maybe different ones emerging as AI becomes part of our QA workflows?
The main one I tend to run into is often related to models of testing and strong beliefs that their single model is the only one and what testing is all about.
Testing to verify models where testing is a quality control activity.
Testing to observe, learn and discover models.
The latter one often naturally encompasses the first model but I do see a lot of views that only seem to include the former without consideration of the latter.
I think the emergence of quality engineering is really interesting.
I would however like clarity on:
If we are trying to make this in to a separate field of expertise: Developer, Tester, Quality Coaches, and Quality Engineer
Or if it is just a mindset/set of practices to incorporate for developers, testers and quality coaches, much like the Shift Left paradigm
If we are trying to separate out a “Quality Engineer” role - what does the practical day-to-day actually look like for this role, that is different from developers, testers and quality coaches?
Because when I look online for “quality engineering” it feels like a lot of it can be divided between already existing roles - i.e. it is more like Shift Left, than a new discipline on its own
Great questions. Personally I feel a quality engineer is an evolution of the tester role so it could be looked at as an area of expertise, but I feel QEs are more generalists than specialists.
I’d say QE fits into continuous quality. You can categorise that as a culture, mindset or practice, depending on your perspective I think.
The Software Quality Engineering Certificate in development at the moment is looking to clarify and answer that question of what does a QE role look like and do.
I wouldn’t say “evolution of the tester role”. I think there is a core competence for a QA Specialist / Tester which is related to testing as an engineering discipline.
A Quality Engineer sounds to me like something different if it is a role in itself. As you said, maybe a generalist instead of a specialist.
Most of what I see on QE seems to be just what a decent holistic tester would be doing with maybe a highly debatable bias whether it makes sense to dilute the core value of testers finding bugs.
I am wary that in a shift view to prevent bugs which does indeed sound really nice its missing the idea that they are still finding bugs just before they have been coded and its still all about finding bugs and opportunities.
Some recent discussions did sell me on the idea of QE though, the argument was pretty much that good testers are rare and its important to distinguish the idea of good testing compared to perhaps a more narrower view of testing alongside maybe encouraging those in the latter view to up their game towards good testing. I remain wary of the risks though and downplaying finding bugs as a key value of the role.
Now whether I have misconceived the QE role, the testing role itself has been misconceived or that the downplaying of finding bugs is actually the biggest misconception is debatable.
To this day and age, QE overall tend to be taken as 2nd priority in most organisations across the world. How many websites have we visited and have seen separate panel/menu for QE, what Quality means to that company? personally next to none or limited.
We, testers I believe are still trying to prove the worth of QE as a whole to respective companies. But if I look back a decade ago, things have changed a lot in a positive way. But in this AI era many thinks that it will replace most the engineering roles not just QA/QE. (Its another debate I’d say).
Misconceptions arises or are present because:
QE/Tester = Findings bugs .
Lack of understanding of QE at all.
Lack of clear direction in regards to QE, where it may/can stand in the organisation.
Lack of understanding what customers expects from us.
Lack of given the rightful space to Quality Engineers on the table.
I have started noticing ‘automation first‘ strategy, I am all up for automation, however, if it remains unchallenged or questioned, a lot of backlog would take place not only professionally but mental as well being a tester.
Your post here has got me wondering what is a QE, my comment earlier referred to a good holistic tester pretty much covering what I have seen being posted as what a QE covers.
The “vastly different” needs part stands out - so could we summerise that difference to get a better understanding?
That good and less good element is also important, comparing a good QE to a less good tester for example is not going to work and similarly comparing a good tester to a less good QE. Lets try with an optimal view of both which is why I went for holistic tester.
I am absolutely sure there are misconceptions, I see them daily even just comparing tester with tester and from comments above I also expect to have misconceptions on QE - so what is it and what’s the difference, perhaps we could add a link to an semi oracle of truth on this one?
Here is one of my own on just some of the things a tester would be involved with for comparison, it is very biased towards the testing element though and I’d expect the same testers to also be involved with quality planning, testability actions etc. One difference may be dev ops activities which I believe a QE may be more involved than a tester and that capability element on that may be accurate.
A misconception is that Quality Engineering is new; for example, Taguchi published Introduction to Quality Engineering in 1986. There is much to learn from Taguchi: https://asq.org/about-asq/honorary-members/taguchi
“QE is a technical role only.”
“AI will replace QA/QE roles.”
What about you? Have you seen any of these in your orgs, or maybe different ones emerging as AI becomes part of our QA workflows?
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