How to improve QA team's product knowledge

Generally in Product QA team, manager/lead assign some components/features to each person and they become an expert on that feature. Each team member should have the knowledge on the entire product not only on a particular feature. This will help to improve the quality of product and reduces the risk for the company if some team changes are required. Each team member wishes to learn about other components/features, but they hardly get time to learn. We can create opportunity in the following ways.

Conducting training or technical sessions

Training will be benefited if we are forming a new QA team. Instead of each person learning about the product one lead/manager should provide some training to the team. This will save team's time and everybody will start from the same page.  Each team member should conduct technical sessions on their expertise feature. This will help other team members to learn about all the features of the product. This not only improves product knowledge in the team, but also improves the communication skills of the team members.

Sprint Reviews

Ref: http://agiletrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Review-Meeting-300x155.png

QA team should attend each and every sprint review and listen carefully about stories presented by other team members. This will improve knowledge on new features. Somebody should maintain sprint review demo recordings. This will help us if any team member misses the sprint review. QA team should practice to give the demo for completed features in sprint reviews.

Answer a forum/support issue every day

Ref: https://goo.gl/RnVU7K

Answering a forum issue is a good practice to learn about the product. Even if we don't know the answer if you spend some time on that issue you will get the answer. If you cannot figure it yourself then you should contact respective dev owner. I am sure they will help you. Don't  worry if anybody answers that question before you. Still you learned something about the product. Management also should allocate some time for answering forum questions. This will improve customer support as well as team's product knowledge.

Changing QA owners for each release

This will provide an opportunity to each team member to get hands on exercise on each feature. When we provide ownership, team member will feel responsibility for that feature and put 100% effort to learn and test. It helps to reply forum threads quickly and also feels like missed the scenario or learn about a corner case if any customer reports any defects on that feature.

Conducting Product Quiz

Each team member can prepare some list of questions on their expertise feature. Conduct a quiz within the team. Each question can open a discussion and at the end of the discussion somebody (Lead) should note down some notes. This should be a fun activity, not a serious one.