Best Practices to Build a High-Performance Quality Engineering Team – Part 4

By /

A successful Quality Engineering team doesn’t just test software—it ensures product excellence across the entire development lifecycle. In an era of Agile, DevOps, and AI, teams must move beyond traditional QA practices and embrace a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement, and automation.

This post highlights 8 best practices to build a high-performance Quality Engineering team that delivers value fast—without sacrificing quality.

1. Hire for Both Technical and Analytical Mindsets

Modern QE roles demand more than test execution. You need team members who are:

  • Proficient in coding/scripting
  • Comfortable with automation tools
  • Curious, analytical, and quality-obsessed

Look for engineers who can write robust test cases, but also design scalable frameworks and think critically about edge cases and user journeys.

2. Embed Quality Engineers Across Agile Teams

The best Quality Engineering teams are not siloed—they’re embedded directly within Agile pods or squads.

Why it works:

  • Quality is everyone’s responsibility
  • QE engineers contribute during grooming, planning, and retros
  • Feedback loops are shorter and more actionable

🔗 Scrum.org: Cross-functional Agile Teams

3. Embrace a Shift-Left and Shift-Right Mindset

High-performing QE teams test early and often by embedding quality into development pipelines:

Shift-left:

  • Unit test support
  • Static code analysis
  • API test creation before UI

Shift-right:

  • Real-user monitoring
  • Chaos testing
  • Observability using tools like Datadog or New Relic

This balance ensures proactive quality—not reactive firefighting.

4. Standardize Test Automation Practices

Without consistency, automation becomes unmaintainable. Set standards around:

  • Naming conventions
  • Folder structure
  • Assertions and logging
  • Code reviews for test scripts

Use proven frameworks like Selenium, Cypress, or Playwright, and make automation part of your Definition of Done.

5. Implement Continuous Testing in CI/CD Pipelines

Quality Engineering teams must ensure automated tests run as code is built and deployed.

Best practices:

  • Run unit, integration, and end-to-end tests on every commit
  • Automate smoke and regression tests in staging
  • Use CI tools like Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions

Testing isn’t a phase—it’s a pipeline.

6. Promote Test Data Management Discipline

A common blocker in test automation is inconsistent or unscalable data.

To overcome this:

  • Build synthetic test data generators
  • Use masked production data when possible
  • Automate data setup and teardown in tests
  • Store data versions with test cases

This enables deterministic test results and avoids flaky test behavior.

7. Build a Culture of Continuous Learning

High-performance QE teams invest in upskilling and mentorship. Encourage:

When your team grows, your product quality grows too.

8. Track KPIs That Actually Drive Quality

Avoid vanity metrics. Instead, focus on KPIs that inform improvement:

  • Defect leakage rate
  • Automation test pass rate
  • Time to detect and fix bugs
  • Coverage across risk areas (not just % lines of code)
  • Feedback loop time per build

Dashboards from tools like TestRail or Allure can help visualize these KPIs.

Final Thoughts

Building a successful Quality Engineering team is about more than great tools—it’s about fostering a mindset of ownership, agility, and continuous improvement. These best practices will help your team scale quality without slowing down delivery.

Remember: the most effective QE teams don’t just test software—they champion quality across the organization.

Scroll to Top