The best versions of this I've seen have QA folks embedded in the service/product team to own the release pipeline, and their job isn’t performing tests, but wr

The best versions of this I've seen have QA folks embedded in the service/product team to own the release pipeline, and their job isn’t performing tests, but writing automated ones, directly pairing with developers, analysts, SREs to do so. It's the antithesis of the all-too-common scenario of QA being isolated as a separate team. The primary goal is obviously to produce useful and targeted feedback as early as possible, but more strategically it elevates the status of QA, making it a gateway job to developer, SRE, or product management. In some organisations the QA function is perceived as a dogsbody role, and a reframing helps to flatten the pecking order and improve access to the talent pool. Before we all went remote work, I'd always recommend adjacent seating for quality folks, to exploit the natural proximity bias. Alas, I'm still not sure what that looks like today.