When you work in Quality Assurance, you’re bound to hear the question, “What do you do?” It’s a much more difficult question to answer than you would think because what we do in testing is fundamentally different from the rest of the company. Everyone in your company is responsible for creating something; a plan, a report, a forecast, or even the product itself. Testers, on the other hand, do not produce something. Instead, they help validate the lack of something; bugs. This different paradigm can make it hard for managers and executives to understand how we provide value to the business, and it can lead to testers becoming little more than robots. Let’s talk about why it’s important to champion how QA work differs and why testers should take charge of testing.

Takeaways from the talk:

• QA work is fundamentally different from the work others do.
• This difference leads many to believe that QA doesn’t provide value.
• How do you demonstrate the value of QA?
• How do you build a QA team that is more than just a cog in the machine?
• How do you explain to executives the difference between testing and automation?
• How do you accelerate your testing so you can release faster?
• How do you make testing a job that people will love?