We present the wafer-level characterization of a 256-channel optical phased array operating at 1550 nm, allowing the sequential testing of different OPA circuits without any packaging steps. Using this, we establish that due to random fabrication variations, nominally identical circuits must be individually calibrated. With this constraint in mind, we present methods that significantly reduce the time needed to calibrate each OPA circuit. In particular, we show that for an OPA of this scale, a genetic optimization algorithm is already >3x faster than a simple hill climbing algorithm. Furthermore, we describe how the phase modulators within the OPA may be individually characterized 'in-situ' and how this information can be used to configure the OPA to emit at any arbitrary angle following a single, initial calibration step.