QA teams can improve software reliability for everyone. So why do so many QA teams get stuck because of outdated processes, a lack of collaboration, not enough automation, and resistance to change? This bottlenecking could result in delayed releases, slipped defects, and irritated stakeholders. So, what can QA teams do to liberate themselves from these restrictions & get back that pace?
In this article, we shall look at some of the more common pitfalls that can hold QA teams back and how we can get back on track.
What is QA?
Quality Assurance (QA) is a process for ensuring that a product, service, or system meets specified requirements and quality. In the context of software development, QA can be seen as a holistic approach to managing and improving the quality of a software product, with an aim to minimize defects, maximize the use of testing, and ensure that the final deliverable is robust, functional, and user-centered.
QA encompasses a range of testing methodologies in order to identify bugs in the system, test for performance to ascertain whether it meets the appropriate standards, and ensure software quality across the development lifecycle, from the planning phase to production. While Quality Control (QC) identifies problems once development has already occurred, QA focuses on improving processes to ensure that defects do not happen in the first place.
What Does a QA Team do?
The QA process is crucial for ensuring the good quality of your software and maintaining a great experience for your users. They are responsible for:
- Test Planning & Strategy – Producing test goals, delivery, and process style as per project needs.
- Requirement Analysis – Analysis of specification in order to ensure any possible errors before the development process begins.
- Design & Execution of test cases – Writing, updating, and running test cases for various scenarios
- Automation Testing – Automating test scripts for efficiency and greater test coverage.
- Manual Testing – Performing exploratory testing, functional testing, regression testing, and usability testing.
- Defect Reporting & Tracking to identify, log and track bugs till they are fixed.
- Performance & Security Testing – The application has to be scalable, faster, and secure.
- Development Team Collaboration – Teaming with developers to solve issues and enhance product quality.
- Regression Testing – Validating functionality after a fix is put into the code.
- Process optimization – Optimising the testing strategies and tools used for the test processes to enhance efficiency.
- A QA team performs these responsibilities so that software with high quality and reliability is delivered and risks and delays are minimized.
Why QA Teams Get Stuck?
QA teams frequently run into pinch points that impede them from moving forward with code, which impacts the quality of their software and how quickly they can release it. Some of these challenges include ambiguous requirements, a lack of proper test automation, an inefficient way to collaborate with development teams, and outdated testing strategies.
Test execution bottlenecks, restricted resources, and manual processes can also slow things down. When the QA Teams come to a dead end, it not only hinders productivity but also raises the risk of buggy software release. The first step in overcoming these challenges is to understand them. In this guide, we’ll look at the top reasons QA teams go astray and how to put them back on the right path.
Assuming Too Much Outdated Testing Methods
Many QA teams still rely heavily on manual testing, which can be useful for some situations but takes much longer and tends to lead to human error. Life Cycle Time — if you utilize just ordinary testing techniques, it slows down the schedule of the software development lifecycle (SDLC), and it becomes difficult to scale out testing efforts.
Traditionally, testing was a logical, deterministic process with no room for creativity, leading to delayed releases. As the demand for faster releases grows, teams that do not adopt modern approaches such as exploratory testing, risk-based testing, or AI-driven test automation fall behind. Because QA teams need to make a change, or else they are a bottleneck instead of an enabler of quality.
Lack of Automation Strategy
Test automation is key for efficiency, but in the absence of a proper strategy, it can harm more than help. Teams have goals, but automation brings tools without standards. Many teams go straight for automation without readiness on goals, ideal tools, or best practices.
This results in unreliable test scripts that fail often and incur higher maintenance costs. In addition, total automation is impractical — teams must strike a balance by combining automation with manual testing for critical workflows, regression tests, and high-impact scenarios. An effective automation plan provides stability, prevents redundancy of effort, and speeds up the release cycle.
Isolated Processes and Lack of Collaboration
QA teams are often separated from development and operations teams, resulting in a disjointed approach to ensuring software quality. Common problems with software development include misunderstandings of the requirements, identification of defects only in the late stages of the software development lifecycle, duplication of testing efforts, etc.
Without collaboration, there is redundant work, non-optimized workflow, and impending delays. Moreover, the teams need to have a shift-left approach, embed QA in CI/CD pipeline, and promote cross-functional collaboration through DevOps and Agile.
Low Test Coverage and Flaky Tests
Accessibility to Complete test coverage has always been a concern in many teams with limited timelines and resource constraints. By having an incomplete set of tests, the risk of getting an undetected defect in production increases. Also, flaky tests — tests that fail or pass based on timing or environment that is not stable — such tests confuse and slow down the development process. By setting focused coverage goals, instilling appropriate test environment infrastructure, and continually evolving their test suites, teams can build reliable, maintainable tests.
Aversion to Change and Innovation
This stagnates QA teams, as there can be a reluctance to try new tools, methodologies, or processes. Whether that’s resistance from leadership or teams that have become rigidly accustomed to legacy workflows, the unwillingness to embrace change within organizations stifles innovation.
While emerging technologies like AI-powered testing, cloud platforms, and containerization offer significant advantages, teams that resist adaptation risk falling behind. To stay competitive, QA teams must embrace continuous learning, explore new strategies, and keep pace with industry trends.
One key challenge in cross-browser testing is Safari for Windows, which Apple discontinued after version 5.1.7. Without native support, ensuring compatibility becomes difficult. Cloud-based platforms like LambdaTest bridge this gap by providing access to real Safari browsers for Windows, enabling accurate cross-browser testing without local setup hassles.
By adopting modern solutions, teams can enhance efficiency, software quality, and release speed, ensuring they stay ahead in the evolving tech landscape.
How to Jump-Start Your QA Teams
Unclear testing strategies, tool limitations, and communication gaps — QA teams often face roadblocks that slow down their efficiency. When productivity stagnates, it can have ripple effects across code quality, launch schedules, and general team morale. This restoration process will involve a combination of optimized processes, sensible automation, and a continuous improvement mindset by QA teams.
This section will take you through practical steps to detect bottlenecks, facilitate collaboration, and adopt the proper instructions to ensure the constant movement of your QA team.
Implement a Shift-Left Testing Strategy
The approach on Shift-left testing advocates for testing early in the development cycle. This proactive attitude helps catch and correct defects earlier, making late-stage corrections less expensive and time-consuming.
How to Implement:
- From the start, build testing into the development pipeline.
- Catch issues as early as possible with unit tests and static code analysis.
- Promote writing test cases with the code
Build a Reliable Test Automation Framework
It provides a more efficient and reliable means to test, known as a test automation framework. QA teams should select repeated and high-impact test cases to automate.
How to Implement:
- Choose tools based on your tech stack (Selenium/Cypress/Playwright etc.).
- Adhere to the standard best practices like modular test design and parameterization.
- Automation scripts should be reviewed and refactored periodically to have them relevant.
Encourage Partnerships with Product Teams and Developers
Eliminating silos between QA, development, and product teams promotes communication and alignment on the same objectives.
How to Improve Collaboration:
- Follow the ”Testing as a Team” philosophy where discussion of requirements involves QA.
- Collaborate in debugging sessions to address defects quickly.
- Leverage communication platforms (i.e., Slack, Jira) for more efficient issue tracking.
Improve Test Data Management
QA team should be provided with accurate, anonymized, and reusable test data.
- Generate synthetic test data generation tools
- Separate environments for staging, UAT, and production-like testing
- The Test data provisioning should be automated to avoid delays.
Improve CI/CD Integration for Continuous Testing
Modern software development requires continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD), where deployments happen alongside automated tests.
Best Practices:
- Set up tests that run automatically after a code commit.
- CI/CD Integration: Ensure test execution is part of the CI/CD pipeline (i.e., through Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, etc.)
- Use Parallel Testing to execute faster.
Tackle Flaky Tests Head-On
Flaky tests are time wasters and reduce confidence in the test results. QA must proactively identify flaky tests and remediate them.
How to Reduce Flakiness:
- Avoid using sleep statements to control the wait.
- Check logs, screenshots, and debug test failures.
- Identify flaky tests and address their causes.
Developing and Retraining the QA Team
By ensuring QA professionals are well-informed on the latest trends and technologies that can lead to long-term success.
Ways to Empower QA Teams:
- Promote certifications in automation testing tools and methodologies
- Hold internal sessions to exchange knowledge.
- Give time for Discovering new tools and techniques.
Leverage AI-Driven Test Automation Solutions
Higher quality testing with test creation/execution/maintenance improvement using AI/machine learning.
AI-Driven Enhancements:
- Use AI-based test generation tools to reduce time in test creation.
- Write self-healing automation scripts that are resilient to UI changes.
- Use predictive analytics to highlight the areas of risk in your applications.
One such tool that can be used is KaneAI by LambdaTest. It is an AI-Native test agent that allows you to perform end-to-end testing.
KaneAI is a GenAI-native testing agent that offers AI-driven test authoring, management, and debugging, allowing testers to create and evolve test cases using natural language. It significantly reduces the expertise and time needed for test automation.
Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement
QA Teams need to have an agile mindset where they keep on fine-tuning their processes and methodologies.
- How to Create a Culture of Constant Improvement:
- Remember your lessons from the past testing cycles by conducting retrospectives.
- Establish realistic targets for process improvements.
This can include acknowledging and rewarding creative solutions,
Conclusion
When QA teams get stuck, it affects product quality, timelines to release, and the mindset of the whole team. But software quality is not out of reach, & modern testing strategies focused on communication, automation and continuous improvement can help QA teams up the pace and take software quality to the next level.
The best option is to become versatile, changeable, and continuously improving. With these tools at their disposal, QA teams can go from being a bottleneck to a catalyst for successful software delivery.
Is your QA team facing stagnancy? Incorporate these solutions within your organization step-by-step after you decide on your pain points to address; the numbers will tell you the rest.
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