Chief Quality Officer

Scenario: “You’re our new QA manager. We have no QA process. Sink or Swim!”

If you’ve just been hired to start/run a QA department, there are a billion things to do. But there are a few things you should put at the top of your list (and perhaps even cover these before you accept the position). Meet with management/boss/powers-that-be and ask these three questions:

#1 - “What is your expectation of what this position will accomplish at this company?”
Translation: What are you going to grade me on? It’s important to find out if the head honchos/honchettes expect you to roll out a total quality initiative (insert flavor-of-the-month model) or they just wanted someone to “be in charge of testing.” Don’t let it stay vague (”build a super QA team!”) - get specifics as best you can.

Once you find out what they expect (and don’t expect) of you - get it in writing. The easiest way to do this is to take mad notes and summarize them in an easy to read email. Send it to the right people with a “please reply and confirm this is what you are paying me for” note, and archive that email. While you’re at it, print it and tack it to your door.

This way you can manage expectations moving forward, when the scope of your job responsibilities changes (or someone tells you “nuh-uh, you’re not allowed to do that”). I can tell you from experience how important this is. Just like the products you test have “feature creep”, so will your job responsibilities. If you don’t get things in writing, the situation can get sticky later.

#2 - “What do you want me to accomplish over the next 12 months?”
Translation: What’s on this year’s list? Ask this to get a feel for what they expect you to actually get done in Year One of your reign. Again, get this in writing, get it confirmed via email.

#3 - “What resources/authority will you give me?”
Translation: Will you give me what I need to do what you just asked me to do? This is the toughie. All too often a new QA Manager is told to “make things right” without being given the power to do so. Find out what kind of resources they will give you (budget, people, etc.) and what kind of authority they will allow you to have.

A good way to test the waters here is to give scenarios. If you are trying to put a process in place to streamline/prevent issues in development, and you meet resistance, what happens next? It stinks to be tasked to do a job and get no management backup (and that happens a lot).

Caveat Testor: Testers Beware
Keep in mind while you ask these questions that you may not get any hard and fast answers at once. Budget numbers may not be available and highly dependendent on market conditions. Management may not have considered actually figuring out what they want from you. But this is your chance to start things rolling so you can figure it out and so you can start being hella productive for your company. So get to it!

- Dave Navarro, CQO