What roles can QA Engineer play in project kick off meeting?

Question

I've been working as QA Engineer since last 2 years.

Right now, my company is looking to change the QA process. They want me to be involved in Project kickoff meeting.

Can you please help me to understand the things I need to consider in project kickoff meeting from the perspective of QA Engineer?

Answer 1

If you get some spotlight time during a kickoff meeting, you're probably expected to represent QA/Testing. It then seems logical to highlight some key points which will be relevant during the project duration.

Examples of potentially interesting topics you might address:

• test strategy, test approaches to be used (you could also expand on, for example, entry and exit criteria)
• test (status) reporting to management (how, frequency, ...)
• role of test team in relation to other teams
• test automation (which technologies, goals, estimated effort...)

Just think of what you'll actually be doing and how relevant those things can be for a kickoff meeting.

Answer 2

You can contribute on a few levels- As a test engineer about testing and testability asking how (many times a day, many test setups do we need, much budget etc.), when (stage of the project, maturity of the code, etc.), who (developers, testers, automation), where (your lab ? outsource ?), what (latest master ? branches ? ) and so on...

As an Engineer having better understanding of the overall picture and processes you can step out and see what is missing, some examples- development to testing, CI, real usage scenarios, integration etc.

As an Engineer knowing something about design and coding

The bottom line is- don't feel bad sitting near experienced and smart software engineers or managers, in some areas you have better knowledge then they do.