Quality as a holistic function: Entelect's Quality Assurance practice

The Entelect team has a 'shift left' mindset.

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Entelect’s Quality Assurance practice officially became part of the Entelect offering in 2020, starting out with 10 quality assurance (QA) engineers. To date, they have grown to 60 members with 50/50 split between manual and automation engineers.

With test approaches that range from pure manual UI functional testing to automated script pipelines, their QA engineers are tool-, tech- and framework-agnostic, ensuring they provide a quality approach that is custom and fit for purpose for every client.

As a collaborative team with a 'shift left' mindset, they offer insights and expertise from the moment a new change is logged until it goes live into production.

Entelect believes that promoting a culture of excellence, competence and knowledge is the most effective means of ensuring quality software products and implementations. The company takes a pragmatic view on quality management and targets it with three key mantras:

Critical thinking

It starts with testing the requirements. Is the team building the right thing? Have they considered any possible side-effects? Will building this feature now make it more difficult to add other features in the future?

Right first time

Software quality measurement is often seen as a post-process, an evaluation and verification of an output, where any faults found will require re-work. Entelect’s focus is on ensuring the people, tools and process are as conducive as possible to building the quality directly into the software the first time, avoiding waste wherever possible.

Fit for purpose

Entelect defines a quality product as one which is fit for purpose, meaning it meets its requirements and satisfies the user. Their practice is committed to delivering high quality software by taking personal and team pride in both technical excellence and client satisfaction.

The practice holds 60+ ISTQB certifications, which teaches the theory behind design techniques for test cases at a foundation level, and at an expert level teaches engineers who are interested in leadership about enterprise and strategic test management. Entelect’s engineers have received these certifications across Foundation, Advanced Technical Test Analyst, Agile Testing, Advanced Test Manager, Expert Test manager and Mobile application testing, and the QA Practice is constantly finding opportunity to upskill and diversify their capabilities.

Internally the team has an automation boilerplate initiative based on practical work as a sandbox for automation engineers to learn from frameworks different to their own. This is also available to manual engineers who wish to be more technically proficient to start honing their skills practically. With a drive to create more full stack automation engineers, meaning one engineer with API, front end and mobile (Android and iOS) capabilities, the practice ensures quality holistic function in their teams and projects.