Why does QA become an amazing Scrum Master?
Living and doing Agile isn’t easy. It’s a completely different philosophy that includes so many specific aspects and roles. In this mindset, besides the roles, like Scrum Masters and Product Owners, we must not forget to mention perhaps the most important – the Development team.
„Scrum is a mindset, culture, and philosophy, not just a fixed set of practices. So, observing, listening, and not interfering are the most important aspects of a great Scrum Master’s job.“
Testers (Quality Assurance) are not necessarily a part of an Agile team, but they are very crucial. Actually, the role of one tester in the Scrum team includes different activities that ensure and provide important feedback not only on test progress, status, and product quality but also on process quality. Among these activities is understanding, implementing, and updating the general Agile Test Strategy.
But, how about Scrum?
In Scrum, each Sprint is quite distinctive. Planning, running tests and analyzing results must be done by the testers. They have complex work, but also a satisfying one. QA testers are one of the key links in the chain of creating new software or games, because their task is to test them to identify all possible problems and bugs and help the company avoid the catastrophe that would occur if they started selling the product. We can say that a QA tester is like a chef who must first try each dish before serving it to the customer to make sure all the flavors are perfect.
So, the main role of the QA tester is therefore to remove all shortcomings and flaws from the products being tested so that it is easy and intuitive to use – as its users expect. But, in practice, we see that more and more often QAs become Scrum Masters. Why is that?
- QAs spent years working within Scrum/Agile/Kanban methodologies
- QAs are analyzing all aspects of one idea/project
- QAs know the value of creating feedback with stakeholders
- QAs can see problems in the system
- QAs see that small changes in the project can make a big impact if they aren’t previously tested
- QAs know how to explain in details each segment of testing and why is their role so important
- QAs are also good at monitoring and coaching, so the Scrum Master role is valuable for these segments as well as for their career
- QAs know that their Scrum Master certification is very significant in Agile world and the experience of testers gives that certification a wider meaning
This article is inspired and published on Testing is believing and Near Shore blogs. Thank you for your inspiration and guidelines.
If you are QA and you agree that Scrum Master role is a natural fit for you, check our scheduled dates for CSM® certification