The key aspect in a Dev(Sec)Ops-oriented organisation is the inter-field communication and collaboration. From this perspective, the QA role can include activities such as:
- continuous improvement of automated QA coverage/effectiveness, reliability, performance (which ideally should target CI/CD, but not always is/can be)
- direct, active/constant involvement with Development:
- for TDD-based development
- for reproducing difficult customer-found defects, developing strategies for verifying their fixes and plugging the holes that allowed such bugs to reach the customer
- feature, roadmap, resource planning, in which all fields should be involved
For organisations building software delivered for deployment and operation by 3rd party customers (like IT infrastructure equipment or consumer products, for example) the QA role could bring their expertise (ideally alongside Development) in customer-facing interactions (maybe just in an assisting role) to improve the understanding of how the customer is using the product and the challenges they face and bring that feedback into the aspects of the product lifecycle under their influence.
For organisations which also deploy and operate the software being produced the QA role may extend to/blend into the Security/Operations field while closing the loop back towards Development and itself, for example:
- ensuring the product quality matches expectations
- managing SLAs
- constantly aiming for reducing deltas between the production environment and the Development/QA one(s), regardless of them being inside of the CI/CD pipeline or not