Comment by ethbr1
9 hours ago
Imho, there are two key values that I've seen QA bring to software companies.
1. Deep user/product expertise. QA (and support) almost always knows more about how users (including expert users) actually use the product than dev.
2. Isolation of quality from dev leadership politics. It should be unsurprising that asking an org to measure and report the quality of its own work is fraught with peril. Even assuming good intentions, having the same person who has been developing and staring at a feature for months test it risks incomplete testing: devs have no way to forget all the insider things they know about a feature.
The best places I've worked were places where QA reported up an entirely different leadership chain than engineering, and where they got their own VP with equal power as the engineering VP, and their own seat at the same decision-making table.
When QA is subordinate to engineering, they become a mere rubber stamp.
A good question to ask when joining a software company is "Does QA have the power to block releases over the objection of engineering?" I have found companies who can answer YES to this put out much better products.