# Roles and Responsibilities The table below describes the three aspects of roles and responsibilities of personnel that are typically required to be involved with testing for software. The following defines the three aspects: ##### **Standard Testing Roles** This is an industry standard testing role that a member of staff will directly or indirectly inherit as part of the project/change. Typically, roles and responsibilities should be agreed at the very start of a project and documented. It is recommended a ‘Test Initiation Meeting’ is held by the Project Manager / Team Leader to define and assign roles and responsibilities. RISA or Government Institution Mapped Roles This describes a role which currently exists in RISA or a Government institution which will typically take on the relevant Testing Role (s) for that project. Whilst not exhaustive this is used to illustrate the type of roles in GoR institution as well as RISA that may map to a Standard Testing Role for a project. It may well be that **one person** in a Government institution may undertake **multiple Standard Testing Roles** and therefore assigning ‘real life’ roles to testing roles is **not a 1-to-1 mutually exclusive scenario.** ##### **Responsibilities** This guideline provides an overview of the standard roles and responsibilities that are typically required during software testing. It is recognized that it may not be practical to have dedicated individuals performing each of the standard roles. In this case Government Institutions can assign these responsibilities to existing project members on a project-by-project basis. The table below summarises the recommended roles with an example provided of how RISA assigns the standard roles to existing team members. Key testing tasks and activities that the testing role incumbent would perform.

Standard testing roles	RISA team members who can be assigned the standard role	Responsibilities
Test Manager	⮚ RISA Test Manager ⮚ RISA Test Lead ⮚ Test Team Member	● To provide guidance to the test leads and teams on the framework, approach and processes the test teams should adopt for the project. ● Monitoring of ongoing projects and milestones, providing inputs and approvals at quality gates. ● Assisting in creation and production of test plans and providing ongoing testing related training.
Test Lead	⮚ Unit & System Testing Team Leader ⮚ User Acceptance Testing: Senior Business Partner Representatives ⮚ Test Team Member	● Leads a team handling a specific component of testing such as a module of the system. For small projects Test Manager and Test Lead can be performed by the same individual. ● Day to Day management of test activities required for that test phase / project. ● Recruitment of test analysts to support the design and execution stages of that test phase. ● Responsible for ensuring Test Process deliverables (e.g. test scripts) are produced within the agreed project timelines. ● Regular reporting of progress during all stages of the Test Process including Planning, Design, Execution and Closure.
Test Analyst	⮚ Developer ⮚ UX team member ⮚ Business Analyst ⮚ GoR Institution/ RISA Staff	● Designing Test Scenarios and/or Test Cases as part of the Test Design Phase. ● Identifying Test Data required to support the tests during execution and working with support teams to produce the data. ● Execution of the tests and providing results to the test lead and raising any defects found during execution.
Defect Manager	⮚ Project Manager ⮚ Team Lead ⮚ Test Team Member	● Responsible for analysing, categorizing and tracking defects to ensure they are fixed in a prioritized manner. ● Tracks and reports on key metrics on open and closed defects. ● Arranges and leads triage meetings between developers and testers when required to assist in resolving high priority defects. ● Obtains approval for deferral of any open defects found to exist prior to ‘Go-Live’