IT Quality Assurance Analyst

at  Calgary Board of Education

MISSION

The Calgary Board of Education (CBE) is the largest school board in western Canada with over 131,000 students and 15,000 employees. Our mission: Each student, in keeping with their individual abilities and gifts, will complete high school with a foundation of learning necessary to thrive in life, work and continued learning. We pride ourselves in the values we hold. Students come first. Learning is our central purpose. Public education serves the common good. The CBE encourages an inclusive and equitable workplace, which supports our diverse student and employee community. We encourage all applicants to join our dynamic, diverse, and collaborative culture and welcome applications from all qualified individuals.
When you apply to the CBE, you can feel good about serving our future leaders and contributing to student success.

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• A 4 year post-secondary degree in Information Technology; and Minimum of 5 years experience working in enterprise IT environments including 4 years direct post certification experience as a software QA Analyst that involved moderately to very complex web based assignments.
• Certification as an ISTQB Certified Tester – Foundation Level (Advanced Level preferred) from the International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB)
• Certification of Entry Certificate in Business Analysis (ECBA) by the International Institute of Business Analysis (IBAAF)
• Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) by the Project Management Institute (PMI) would be an asset.
• Experience with UI/UX/Usability testing.
• Experience with Defect Management tools including but not limited to Jira, Bugzilla
• Experience with cross-device/browser compatibility testing of web applications (within mobile/tablet devices would be considered an asset).
• Understanding of the quality assurance processes, practises and terminology.
• Understanding of business analysis processes, methodologies, practises and terminology.
• Understanding of software development processes, practises and terminology.
• Understanding of unit testing and test-driven development practises within an Agile development team.
• Knowledge of Project Management, Change Management, Transition Management, and Service Management principles, methodologies and tools would be an asset.
• Experience in working with external stakeholder bodies, government agencies, and executive boards.
• An equivalent combination of directly related post-secondary education and directly related experience may be considered.

DEMONSTRATED SKILLS AND COMPETENCIES

• Strong interpersonal, communication, negotiation skills.
• Strong problem solving skills, as well as a passion for undertaking and solving difficult, ambiguous problems.
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with co-workers and clients.
• Highly adaptive to changing conditions and open to new ideas.
• Excellent organizational and planning skills.
• Ability to work with minimal supervision and to undertake small to medium tasks independently.
• Ability to multi task and work well under the pressures of very demanding situations.
• Commitment to continuously learn and grow intellectually.
• Personal suitability.

Ensures that business objectives and context are known and honoured during the architecting, designing and development of technical solutions and applications

• Models business functions, processes, information flows, workflows and data structures suitable for enhancing knowledge and understanding.
• Creates plans, presentations, charts, dashboards, tables and diagrams to assist with analysing and visualizing problems and prospective solutions.
• Leads technical delivery teams with analysing deliverables against operational requirements during implementations and software development life cycles.
• Assists system architects, system analysts, and technology stakeholders in specifying the Information Security requirements of new systems or enhancements to existing applications or solutions

PURPOSE

The IT Quality Assurance Analyst works within and across the domains of software/solution quality assurance and business analysis to build user confidence and satisfaction by ensuring that, technical solutions continually satisfy business and stakeholder needs. The IT Quality Assurance Analyst elicits user/business requirements, formulates specifications for technology solutions and then scrutinizes and evaluates proposed solutions against the user/business needs. In so doing, the IT Quality Assurance Analyst will actively participate throughout the solutions lifecycle and make recommendations that enhance quality assurance of solutions. This role works closely with technical and business users from schools and service units to understand and documents business processes, and objectives and to translate those into business, functional and technical requirements and suitable test plans. This job will work to eliminate gaps between how stakeholder business requirements are articulated, documented, and understood and then, how corresponding technology solutions are conceived, architected, built, tested and delivered. The role will create, refine and execute test plans and lead User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to enhance the probability that delivered functionality exactly matches business and functional needs

ACCOUNTABILITY:

This job is accountable for:

• Ensuring that technical solutions satisfy business and stakeholder needs.
• Building relationships with stakeholders as a foundation for eliciting, understanding, and refining business and technical requirements.
• Developing Test Plans, testing solutions and providing guidance and direction during User Acceptance Testing (UAT).
• Scrutinizing technical specifications and solutions and providing recommendations for improvement.
• Identifying and rectifying gaps in requirements or understandings of requirements.
• Keeping current with trends and best practises related to business analysis and quality assurance practises, methodologies and tools.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

Enhances the quality of solutions by leading work to better understand business objectives and context as a prerequisite for designing and developing technical solutions, systems and applications

• Leads and works closely with users to understand and document business objectives, requirements, risks, impacts, timelines and acceptance criteria.
• Leads and works closely with users to elicit, understand and document use cases, user scenarios, functional/non-functional requirements, workflows, processes and technical issues.
• Deconstructs and analyses business services to document and map business processes while ensuring that other drivers and insights are appropriately considered.
• Translates business requirements into functional, non-functional, technical specifications and configuration elements for use by technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Identifies business/organizational constraints and impacts to business processes by analyzing system, staff functions and capabilities.  Conducts requirements validation and prioritization exercises.
• Ensures all essential information and artifacts relating to business processes are collected and validated by internal and/or external clients.
• Identifies, analyses and documents data, systems, workflow, and process dependencies.
• Identifies deficiencies in systems, workflows, and processes and recommends corrective action.
• Coordinates and facilitates stakeholder meetings and provides appropriate, proactive communications.

Enhances the quality of solutions produced by applying robust testing to ensure solutions consistently satisfy stakeholder expectations

• Develops tests and testing protocols to ensure that direct connections between test cases and business requirements (and functional specifications) are maintained.
• Designs and sets up test environments, test plans and test data.
• Designs and performs functional, integration, regression, and performance load testing.
• Analyses test cases/scenarios, test results to ensure completeness and effectiveness.
• Utilizes automated testing and QA approaches.
• Correlates information related defects, incident, anomalies, changes and issues to resolve problems proactively.
• Reports on root causes of defects and problems identified during testing.
• Leads Defects and Triage type meetings for resolving or devising mitigations to identified defects.
• Troubleshoots problems, issues and/or defects found during testing.
• Ensures solutions, applications and/or systems are produced with the ability to withstand unexpected data and user errors.
• Captures and shares system performance feedback with project and/or development teams.
• Participates in solution reviews, code reviews and provides feedback.
• Assists stakeholders during the User Acceptance Testing (UAT) phases.
• Prepares Change Requests and follows change control processes to effect modifications to applications and systems.
• Reviews change requests and assesses change impacts, risk and readiness.
• Maintains test environments and their related configurations.
• Provides guidance to information technology staff as necessary

Develops and implements strategies, and plans to ensure that applications and systems are kept current and continue to satisfy stakeholder needs throughout their lifecycle

• Establishes processes for tracking changing business processes and business functions/objectives through all lifecycle phases to ensure that operational and technical requirements are current, known and documented.
• Develops, maintains and shares technical specification and business process documentation pertinent to business and systems owners.
• Keeps current on the business and technical drivers behind applications, systems and solutions.
• Conducts Feasibility Studies, Option, Impact and Efficacy analyses.
• Works with stakeholders and vendors to ensure proactive lifecycle planning, and management is observed.
• Keeps abreast of product and product lifecycles developments.
• Participates as a member of an Emergency Response Team (ERT) assisting crossfunctional teams with resolving major system or technology issues.
• Coordinates work on and provides guidance to medium to large sized project teams.
• Develops and maintains relationships and contacts with technology vendors, partners, and external agencies.

Ensures that business objectives and context are known and honoured during the architecting, designing and development of technical solutions and applications

• Models business functions, processes, information flows, workflows and data structures suitable for enhancing knowledge and understanding.
• Creates plans, presentations, charts, dashboards, tables and diagrams to assist with analysing and visualizing problems and prospective solutions.
• Leads technical delivery teams with analysing deliverables against operational requirements during implementations and software development life cycles.
• Assists system architects, system analysts, and technology stakeholders in specifying the Information Security requirements of new systems or enhancements to existing applications or solutions.

Provides other IT support

• Assists system architects, system analysts, and other staff and stakeholders with deploying and/or migrating applications or infrastructure services.
• Prepares and delivers user training.
• Promotes Application Lifecycle Management practises.
• Leverages project management understandings and practises to complete initiatives/projects.
• Understands and works consistent with IT and organizational governance processes and policies.
• Proactively communicates progress and timelines of work assignments.
• Performs other related responsibilities as assigned to meet the purpose and accountabilities of the role.
• May be required to participate in a 7x24 on-call rotation based on a predetermined schedule.