Job Specification

Purpose :

Ontario Digital Services is looking for an information technology professional with a very strong background in Agile and quality assurance to design and manage technology chapter's overall Quality Assurance Framework and standards, including Quality Assurance (QA) processes, practices and tools supporting development and IT operations. This role will provide QA, project management and technical expertise in the development of system and user acceptance testing strategies and plans to support business-essential applications and databases in an Agile and DevOps environment.

Key Responsibilities :

QA Strategy and Framework:

- Design and maintain an Enterprise Quality Assurance Strategy to achieve the highest possible quality of all System development work for the chapter.
- Design and extend Development and Quality Assurance (QA) frameworks, including the necessary automation.
- Provide technical leadership and strategic direction for testing and automation tools to the entire chapter.
- Recommend and help implement improvements for Software QA and SDLC processes and procedures.
- Evolve automated test framework to achieve higher quality, higher test throughput, increased accessibility and test execution flexibility
- Research and evaluate test automation tools, as well as plan and estimate effort required to incrementally deliver targeted and streamlined automation initiatives, develop, maintain, and execute automated test cases.
- Develop and implement QA metrics and success criteria

QA Support (Development & Dev Ops):

- Provide advanced technical expertise and mentoring to the development teams and the broader organization.
- Champion quality assurance process improvements across the organization.
- Review test approach of each development team and provide feedback and recommendations for improvement.
- Analyze testing, DevOps processes, standards, and best practices and drive necessary improvements.
- Provide technical support to Test Automation tools.
- Participate in Sprint Retrospective to examine current Quality Assurance practices to identify potential improvement opportunities.
- Evaluate test automation tools and processes and provide recommendations to promote best practices.
- Transform functional, business, and system knowledge into effective test case planning and execution.
- Determine appropriate metrics to measure the value of the quality assurance framework, process and practices.
- Create test data according to the test plan; analyze testing results and retesting until expected results are obtained; perform reviews with users and ensures client acceptability levels are met (e.g. participating in walk throughs); recommend changes to ensure acceptable testing results; retest all criteria in a live environment and recommend user sign off for implementation.
- Work closely with developers, architects, product owners, and others in establishing effective test plans based on feature documentation.
- Apply QA and technical expertise and engage other expertise to track and resolve testing and production issues and other IT related problems with quality deficiencies and maintain client service integrity.
- Automate tests by developing test scripts, following the team's standards and guidelines.
- Ensure that testing automation is under source control, documented and disaster recovery is in place.

QA Culture:
- Be the Change Champion of the Whole-Team Quality Assurance approach and the Agile Testing mind-set.
- Sets the vision, defines the value, and acts as a role model for creating a culture that sets superior standards and delivers on time and on budget.
- Drive the adoption of proven testing patterns and technologies to ensure timely high quality releases.
- Assist in training and mentoring of testers, developers, and product managers across the organization towards QA concepts, techniques, principles, and standards.
- Participate in the development of procedural and training manuals by critiquing proposed revisions/additions on new initiatives, prepare training materials and provide training and systems familiarization to staff.
- Develop and document detailed test plans, criteria and expected results based on user requirements.
- Provide QA, technical and project advice, direction and guidance to project teams in: develop test scenarios and scripts; use automated test tools; tests that conforms to technical specifications; develop performance measures and evaluate results and progress to ensure that solutions meets time, cost and quality commitments.

Knowledge / Skill :

Hands-on experience with Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
- Knowledge and experience with Continuous Integration, Continuous Build and Continuous Deployment Practice, Tools and trends
- Experience with how Automation Testing can enable Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and DevOps strategy.
- Understand the roles and activities on an Agile Team.
- Understand the differences between Traditional and Agile Testing.
- Full understanding of Agile Testing and the four Agile Testing Quadrants
- Knowledge in various SDLC methodologies including waterfall, Agile, and iterative approaches
- Strong programming background and expertise in at least one Test Automation Platform
- Four or more years of experience with agile development framework (preferably SAFe), DevOps, Test Driven Development (TDD), Acceptance Test Driver Development (ATDD) and Behaviour Driven Development (BDD)
- Experience with building and maintaining Test Automation frameworks
- Experience implementing both Continuous Integration (CI) and Life Cycle Management on a automation implementation
- Knowledge of QA practices including application unit, integration, functional, automation, regression, performance/load, system acceptance
- Knowledge of QA methods, tools, measurement, and standards in order to develop strategies, plans, scenarios and provide QA expertise and advice to product teams.
- Knowledge of business and systems analysis techniques to analyze business requirements, system and automation testing needs and create testing plans and cases to ensure compliance with business requirements
- Knowledge of emerging trends, technologies in the QA, system testing, automation, regression testing, and user acceptance testing field to identify and evaluate technologies that have potential value to the enterprise and develop recommendations
- Demonstrated knowledge of manual and automated quality assurance procedures
- Ability to conduct detailed analysis of systems and procedures to support business requirements
- Experience in effectively utilizing various computer software (e.g. word processing, spreadsheets, database management software
- Knowledge of project management methodologies to develop project plans, lead resources, monitor progress and deliver solutions that meet QA standards, satisfy time and cost estimates, and meet client requirements
- Ability to assess concurrent priorities and organize workload to meet deadlines and to participate in status meetings
- Knowledge of incident/problem management processes and the infrastructure in which applications are developed and run to facilitate resolution of QA and other problems through root cause analyses across the environment and minimize loss of service.
- Experience using technical documents such as business requirements, system requirements, architectural design documents, database design representations, data and systems flow diagrams
- Ability to analyze metrics, identify dysfunctions, and make recommendations to senior management
- IT project management policies, procedures and methodologies to plan and lead concurrent projects, products and provide guidance to the team.
- Written and oral communications skills to consult and clarify needs, present information, options and recommendations, explain technical concepts and terminology and architecture-related topics to peers/clients/stakeholders.
- Written and oral communication skills to present technology strategies and solutions to senior management.
- Ability to advice regarding approaches to contentious systems architecture issues; deliver presentations to clients and stakeholders.

Interpersonal / Influencing Skill :

- Demonstrated ability to work effectively with partners with different interests and priorities
- Demonstrated effective consultation, persuasion and advisory skills to counsel clients/stakeholders
- Demonstrated written and oral communication, interpersonal and negotiation skills to develop specifications, test plans, test scenarios, scripts and acceptance criteria and present to business clients, project and testing teams, cluster staff, vendors and other stakeholders to gain approvals to proceed.
- Demonstrated strong oral and written communication skills, with the ability to communicate technical topics to management and non-technical audiences, as well as interface with the customer on a daily basis

Analyzing / Problem Solving Skill :

Analyzing and problem solving skills to:
- Evaluate the results from testing against pre-defined acceptance criteria and recommend acceptance or rework of tested applications
- Identify and resolve project or testing problems such as an application code not passing test criteria when problems are diverse, the causes are not apparent but require root cause analysis of the test environment and engagement of other cluster staff to eliminate the infrastructure as a cause
- Assess individual projects, scope, architectural requirements and organizational impacts, and recommend best frameworks, methods, standards, procedures and solutions based on the nature of the project, its problems and the status of the work
- Develop appropriate performance measures that are adaptive and responsive to address the continuous introduction of new and emerging technologies, use of unfamiliar or unproven technology, broadly defined or undefined business and systems requirements.

Decision Making / Responsibility :

Responsible for:
- Managing a range of projects and ensuring they are completed on time, within budget and according to specified quality and user requirements.
- Assuring ongoing compliance with quality and industry regulatory requirements
- Providing expertise and guidance within the accessibility(AODA compliance requirements) process modelling, security provisions, and data management.
- Making recommendations on procedures or practices to improve systems performance

Contacts / Stakeholder :

- Senior management and executives, to provide expertise, plans, strategies and solutions related to emerging technologies, technical and architectural issues;
- Developers, to explore/discuss/resolve development languages, tools and environment issues;
- Liaises directly with internal and external client/stakeholder groups to discuss and resolve issues, clarify
requirements and provide information on progress/status of initiatives.
- Other specialists to share information develop best practices, and consistent communications regarding directive, procedures and practice implementation strategies

Guidance / Supervision :

- Leads and support the teams in developing and performing QA plans, analysis, and reviews.
- Provides subject matter expertise to other staff; functional guidance and supervision for staff managed by other positions
- Leads team development of components of architecture projects (e.g. information artifacts on systems development) to provide context, assign tasks, schedule meetings, review progress, assess deliverables, make recommendations, and report status to management.

Demands / Pressures :

Work Demands :

- Frequent conflict work demands while managing concurrent projects and last minute unexpected assignments (e. g. requests for advice).
- Occasional unexpected changes in deadlines on short notice, tight time pressures, and changing priorities;
continuous conflicting work demands.
- Occasionally required to reset work priorities (e.g. due to emerging issues, concurrent projects requiring coordination with other areas, requests for information/advice).
- Often required to manage multiple projects at the same time.

Mental / Sensory :

- Regular requirement to read without interruption and constant requirement to concentrate intently.
- Frequent requirement to concentrate when analyzing complex data, giving instructions to product teams, or presenting to senior IT management.
- Frequent context switching required to complete tasks associated with multiple concurrent projects and initiatives
- High levels of attention required to assess how small details affect the delivery of projects and initiatives affecting clients.

Conditions / Environment :

Work is performed in a typical office environment.