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3. QA Roles & Responsibilities

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Quality assurance at Spline Studio is a shared responsibility across multiple roles within the project team. While QA engineers lead testing activities, maintaining product quality requires collaboration between QA, development, and product management teams.

This section outlines the high-level responsibilities of the key roles involved in the quality assurance process.

3.1 Head of Assurance

The Head of Assurance is responsible for defining and maintaining the overall QA strategy across Spline Studio projects.

Key responsibilities include:

  • defining QA standards, processes, and quality guidelines
  • overseeing testing practices across projects
  • ensuring consistent quality assurance approaches across teams
  • supporting risk management related to product quality
  • establishing testing frameworks, tooling strategies, and automation direction
  • monitoring QA metrics and quality indicators across projects
  • participating in release readiness and quality governance decisions

3.2 QA Engineers

QA Engineers are responsible for planning and executing testing activities to validate product functionality and ensure product stability.

Key responsibilities include:

  • analyzing requirements and identifying potential risks
  • designing and executing test scenarios and test cases
  • performing functional, regression, and exploratory testing
  • reporting and documenting defects with clear reproduction steps
  • verifying bug fixes and validating resolved issues
  • maintaining testing documentation and test coverage
  • collaborating with developers and product teams to clarify expected behavior
  • providing visibility into testing progress, defect status, and overall project quality
  • reporting testing outcomes and key quality indicators to the Head of Assurance
  • supporting release readiness assessments through structured QA reporting

3.3 Automation Engineers

Automation Engineers focus on building and maintaining automated testing solutions that improve testing efficiency and release reliability.

Key responsibilities include:

  • developing and maintaining automated test suites
  • identifying scenarios suitable for automation
  • integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines
  • maintaining stability and reliability of automated tests
  • supporting regression testing through automation

3.4 Developers

Developers contribute to product quality through proper implementation, code quality practices, and early defect prevention.

Key responsibilities include:

  • implementing functionality according to requirements
  • writing and maintaining unit tests to validate code behavior and ensure adequate test coverage
  • performing unit testing and code validation before submitting changes
  • fixing reported defects in a timely manner
  • collaborating with QA during issue investigation
  • supporting testing by adding logs, error tracking, and debugging tools to make issues easier to identify and investigate

3.5 Designers

Designers contribute to product quality by ensuring that user interfaces are clear, consistent, and aligned with usability standards throughout the product lifecycle.

Key responsibilities include:

  • collaborating with QA and product teams during early stages of feature design to address usability and interface considerations
  • reviewing and adjusting design solutions based on QA feedback during early testing and validation stages
  • participating in discussions following exploratory testing to help improve usability and user experience
  • identifying and proposing design improvements when QA highlights user interface or user experience issues
  • supporting defect resolution when design updates are required to fix UI or UX-related issues

3.6 Project Management

Product and project management roles support quality assurance by ensuring that requirements are clear and that delivery timelines allow proper testing activities.

Key responsibilities include:

  • providing clear product requirements and acceptance criteria
  • supporting prioritization of defects and quality issues
  • coordinating release planning and delivery schedules
  • facilitating communication between QA, development, and stakeholders
  • participating in release readiness decisions

3.7 QA Responsibilities Matrix (RACI)

R — Responsible
A — Accountable
C — Consulted
I — Informed

Activity Head of Assurance QA Engineers Developers Designers Project Management
QA Strategy & Standards A I I I I
Test Planning A R C C C
Test Case Design I R C C I
Functional & Exploratory Testing I R C C I
Defect Reporting I R C C I
Bug Fix Implementation I C R C I
UI / UX Improvements I C C R C
Test Automation A R C I I
Release Readiness Assessment A R C C C
QA Reporting & Quality Metrics A R I I C

← Previous: Testing Principles & Approach | Back to QA Strategy | Next: Scope and Types of Testing →