Building a QA practice from scratch

When you’re the only QA, how do you instill quality practices and build that mindset into the wider company? I'm going to walk through how we went from eight to forty-five quality advocates, and talk about recruiting, training, fun, multiple remote offices, delegation, velociraptor-avoidance techniques, staffing, blood, sweat, and tea. I’ll share the potholes we fell into so you can fall in different ones, and build a practice of awesome testers.

Building a QA practice requires buy-in from management and developers, and can mean changing the process to include up-front quality advocacy, instead of end-of-the-line quality control. Quality starts before the project is sold to the stakeholders, and it doesn't end until after the product is in the hands of the end users. Growing a practice means finding the right people to work with, and communicating well with clients, users, sales, management, and developers.

Transcript

1. Building a QA practice 1 Alison Hawke @BritishKoalaTea
2. Once upon a time “We do test-driven development… we don’t need QA.” 2
3. July 2019 45 Quality Advocates Training the 11th apprentice 5 offices in 2 countries 3
4. How do you do it? Show value as a solo Get allies outside QA 4
5. How do you do it? Add people Multiply value 5
6. How do you do it? v2 Make mistakes Figure out a better way Keep going 6
7. Velociraptor Avoidance Burnout 7
8. Show value as a solo How to survive on your own 8
9. One is the loneliest number You are the only QA in the building… Now what? 9
10. Automation and manual testing Which is better? Yes. Increase speed and reliability Learn all the things! 10
11. Whole-team quality What happens when you go on vacation? Don’t be a Gandalf saying, “You Shall Not Pass!” 11
12. QA is dead Quality Control is inefficient, frustrating, and time-consuming. Quality Assurance was better But the role evolves... 12
13. Long live Quality Advocacy! Quality Advocacy gives you freedom You work in the whole software process, from idea to deployment 13
14. Get allies from outside QA Talking to the boss 14
15. Getting buy-in from the boss Be the best you can be Train others Apprentices 15
16. Dev and UX and PO, oh my! Listen and ask questions Shadow the other roles Go to conferences 16
17. Constant vigilance training! If you stop learning, you will become a fossil Pursue an interest and become an expert Continuous improvement 17
18. Add people Putting a band together 18
19. Velociraptor Avoidance Hiring the wrong people 19
20. Recruiting and other minefields Read The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton Hire people that are good in teams 20
21. Recruiting and other minefields Look for people who have fun in the role Hire people who want to learn 21
22. Personality problems http://16personalities.com DiSC test 22
23. Think differently Look for people who are different from you 23
24. Treat it like any other bug Standardize the interview process to reduce bias What are your acceptance criteria for the need? 24
25. Get some values If people don't share your values, they won't enjoy your team Read The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni 25
26. Delegate or Burnout If you’re leading the team, some day you won’t be able to test any more Do you want that? 26
27. Multiply value Moving as a team 27
28. Assembling a tribe Slack, IM, or some other collaboration tool Ask for help often Give help to others 28
29. #QAproblems 29
30. Building an army worthy of Mordor Get everyone involved in the interviewing process 30
31. Growing the people Mentoring 1:1 sessions to power-level people Build trust and relationships 31
32. Velociraptor Avoidance Lack of feedback 32
33. Accelerators Remote offices 33
34. Long-distance relationships Siblings, not clones Remote onboarding 34
35. Remote and virtual teams When your team isn’t within poking distance https://www.sococo.com/ 35
36. Accelerators Training apprentices 36
37. Build vs. buy If you can’t buy, you need to build Building an apprentice is a team project 37
38. Blueprints Pick the best candidate available Full-time pairing Vary their experience 38
39. Blueprints Have an end date Set a capstone project 39
40. Velociraptor Avoidance Miscommunication 40
41. Build a practice Show value as a solo Get allies outside QA Add people Multiply value 41
42. Velociraptor Avoidance Three guaranteed ways to empty an occupied conference room 42
43. Resources I mentioned 43
44. Books referenced The No Asshole Rule by Robert Sutton The Ideal Team Player by Patrick Lencioni Radical Candor by Kim Scott Humble Inquiry by Edgar Schein 44
45. Tools to help Personality test (sort of MBTI) https://www.16personalities.com DiSC test (Everybody DiSC) https://www.yourlifespath.com/ Standardize your interviews to reduce bias 45