Although it might seem that quality assurance engineers and project managers are on two different tracks, their collaboration is crucial for project success.

Even though the importance of collaboration between developers and quality assurance engineers is more widely discussed, the importance of collaboration between quality assurance engineers and project managers is equally as important and should be talked about more often.

I recently worked on an e-commerce project where we experienced a three-month delay in our delivery date due to the project managers and quality assurance engineers working in silos. So, I can confidently say the collaboration of a quality assurance engineer and the project manager in a project isn’t just good, it is essential.

In this article, I will briefly discuss the roles and responsibilities of a quality assurance engineer and a project manager, highlight the practical pain points that arise when working silos without proactive collaboration, and provide insights on maintaining proactive collaboration based on my experience working on an e-commerce project.

The quality assurance engineer is responsible for monitoring the quality of the process used to develop the software.

Typically, in an Agile environment, a quality assurance engineer will design test scenarios and test cases for each user story and execute those test cases manually or automatically. When a bug fix is needed and delayed, the quality assurance engineer would inform the project manager at the initial level of escalation. Then the project manager can follow up with the tech lead to expedite the bug fix.

On the other hand, the project manager is responsible for the delivery of the software project.

The project manager tries to deliver the project within the planned time frame and within the estimated budget and is responsible for coordinating with the team to clear any impediment that arises during the software development life cycle. The most important task of the project manager, though, might be communicating with clients and informing them upfront of any timeline deviations.

• Communication Gap and Deviation of Project Goals: This is the main pain point that arises when working in silos.
  
  When the quality assurance engineer isn’t aware of the project schedule and the project manager isn’t aware of the open bugs raised to fix, it could result in poor task prioritization by the quality assurance engineers. This could lead to important bugs not being addressed before the project deadline, ultimately affecting the quality of the final product.
  
  Similarly, if the project manager is not informed about the bugs identified by the quality assurance engineer, the project manager may not allocate sufficient resources or adjust project timelines to address these issues, leading to project delays or customer dissatisfaction due to compromised quality.

• Resistance to Change: A siloed structure can lead to resistance to change, as the quality assurance engineer and the project manager may become entrenched in their own ways of doing things.
  
  For instance, if the quality assurance engineer has been following a specific testing approach for years and is resistant to adopting new tools or technologies recommended by the project manager or other teams, it can hinder innovation and impede progress.

• Customer Experience Issues: As a side effect of working in silos, customer requirements may not properly transfer to the quality assurance engineer, resulting in test scenarios and cases deviating from customer expectations.
  
  This can result in bugs going unnoticed until the product reaches the end-user, leading to poor customer experiences and potential reputational damage.

1. Understand the importance and initiate collaboration: First, the project manager and the quality assurance engineer should understand the importance of their collaboration in delivering a high-quality project within the promised timeline to the end user.

2. Include QA updates in the daily scrum meeting: The daily scrum meeting is an event in Agile software development practice which provides an opportunity for the project manager to ask the quality assurance engineer about pending bugs and prioritize them for resolution.

   When this happens on a daily basis, it reduces bug backlogs, bugs will be addressed promptly, and the quality of the project will improve over time.

3. One-on-one meetings: In addition to daily scrum meetings, the quality assurance engineer can set up one-on-one meetings with the project manager on a regular basis to discuss ongoing bugs and trends of bugs.

   When a recurring bug is encountered, both the project manager and quality assurance engineer can set up a brainstorming session with the tech lead to find solutions to prevent it from happening in the future. You can also consider increasing the unit test coverage for that particular component or workflow so that, it will help to catch issues earlier in the development life cycle.

4. Involve quality assurance engineer in the planning meetings: The project manager can involve the quality assurance engineer in the project milestones/releases/road map planning meetings so that the quality assurance engineer knows the business critical functionalities, deadlines, customer expectations and so on.

   That will ultimately help the quality assurance engineer to develop test cases which focus on the actual business needs and priorities and also to identify any potential risks, ensuring the reliability of the project.

5. Monitor the improvements: Enforce a culture to encourage continuous feedback and suggestions from both the project manager and quality assurance engineer to accelerate their proactive collaboration.

   Evaluate and refine the collaboration processes regularly to optimize the efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high-quality projects.

Applying these five collaboration strategies will help in establishing proactive collaboration with the project manager and the quality assurance engineer, leading to smoother project execution, reduced bug counts, high-quality and on-time project delivery, and ultimately, greater project success.

In this article, we have talked about how important it is for the quality assurance engineer who makes sure the software meets the customer's expectations to work together with the project manager who manages the project.

We briefly discussed the respective roles of a quality assurance engineer and a project manager and highlighted possible issues that can surface if they don't collaborate. Their roles may be different, but without effective collaboration, problems can occur that directly impact the project.

Finally, we discussed strategies that promote collaboration, communication, finding bugs and fixing them quickly to ensure that the project is successful.

MagicPod is a no-code AI-driven test automation platform for testing mobile and web applications designed to speed up release cycles. Unlike traditional “record & playback” tools, MagicPod uses an AI self-healing mechanism. This means your test scripts are automatically updated when the application’s UI changes, significantly reducing maintenance overhead and helping teams focus on development.