Both in my Scrum Team and in the IT Department as a whole, we do not have a single hired QA-personnel. In fact, it is mandated by upper management that we cannot hire one (and I do not think this likely to change). Despite this, there still exists a requirement for quality, functioning work - even before it's handed to the (internal) users for beta testing/UAT.
How this has been solved thus far is by having the PO also act as QA. However, worth noting is the fact that she also serves as PM for every project the department has, and sometimes even as a secretary. As a result, stories are often considered 'Done' only towards the end of a Sprint, or else pushed one (or more) Sprints ahead before she can find the time to QA them. Obviously, we can't just have the developers just sit around for a month to allow her to catch up.
As I see it, the only solutions I've come up with are:
- Continue as we are.
- Dedicate an hour of each developer's time each day to QAing each others' work.
- Remove QA entirely and just increase testing by the developer who did the work.
I'm not terribly fond of any of these options; is there a better route to improve our process?