List: QA project scoping topics
- Checklist of QA topics for project scoping, e.g. to evaluate QA maturity
Overview/context#
System under test (tech stack + documentation)#
- Architecture (monolith vs microservices)
- Backends & frontends
- 3rd-party services/APIs
- (Cloud) Infrastructure
Engineering organization#
- Teams: dependencies, structure/roles & seniority
- QA structure: centralized or de-centralized
- Continuous improvement (retros)
Project#
- Stakeholders
- Role expectations & KPIs
- Focus on single team or cross team
- Runtime/Deadline & Milestones
- Main risks
- Business domain (of the team)
Deep dive#
Testing#
Tests/"test pyramid" (coverage, count/runtime, execution, tools/frameworks)#
- Unit/Component
- Mutation testing
- Property-based testing
- Fuzz testing
- Integration (infrastructure)
- E2E
- API
- UI
- (User-) Acceptance
- End-user incorporation
- Explorative
- Non-functional
- performance
- security/penetration
- UX
- infrastructure resilience
Environments#
- Stages: local/dev, staging/pre-prod, prod
- Service/infrastructure setup (backends, frontends, 3rd-party) & mocks
- Data (generation/sources)
(QA) Management (processes & inter-dependencies, tools, involved roles)#
-
Requirements/user stories
- BDD: 3 Amigos, Gherkin
- DoR & DoD
- TDD: feature testability, acceptance tests
-
QA
- Tests (suites)
- Metrics (DORA, escaped defects, incident impact...)
-
Defects/bugs
- Incidents & customer-care
- Risk
Release & Deployment#
- Frequency & notes
- Deployment pipeline & strategy (rolling, blue green, canary, A/B)
- Rollback process
- Stakeholders/roles & approval
- Checklist/guidelines
- Smoke tests
- Feature toggles
- Quality gates (coverage, test types)
Monitoring#
- Logs/Traces/Metrics
- Dashboards & Alerts
- RUM
- On-call
Development#
- Use of specialized roles (Architect, DevOps, Security)
- Quality software engineering
- DDD
- Software design patterns
- Software design principles (SOLID)
- Code style/linters
- Code reviews
- Tech debt management (MoSCoW etc)
- Stewardship/ownership
Documentation#
- Architecture
- Service READMEs/manuals & troubleshooting
- Business processes & ubiquitous language
- Data flows
- APIs
- Written guidelines/ best practice reference (logging, error handling etc; service design/architecture)