Baptism of Fire - Becoming a Modern Test Leader with Simon Prior.


Details
(Please note that this will be an online live webinar event via Zoom hosted by Woodrow mercer)
Having been in Software engineering for 11 years and QA for 7 years, in June 2017, I became a QA Manager. Without any training, I went from Technical Lead to QA Manager almost overnight. I’ll admit, I felt like an imposter, if it hadn’t been for the support from my manager in particular, I’m not sure how I would have proceeded. It was always a change I wanted to make but was I prepared for what this role was really all about?
From day 1 and from no fault of the company, I needed to take on managing the local QA team and build a brand new team in Cork, Ireland too. My eyes were open to the fact there were big differences between the lead role and the management role and also of the differences between companies. This talk will go through what I had to overcome since becoming a manager and look at the main lessons I have learned.
Since becoming a manager, some of the hurdles to overcome were the following:
- Hiring and coaching a whole new team in a remote location
- Resignations
- Taking a team member through a disciplinary process
- In-team disputes
- Difference in views of Quality between myself and management
- Battling a view of testing being an activity completed at the end of a project
- Reaching Burnout and how I overcome it
Below are some of the lessons I learned:
- Encouraging and advocating technical decisions from your team rather than making them myself
- Always putting your people first, coaching and supporting them
- Dealing with people’s reaction to you after a title change and having a consistent approach with all team members
- Being Willing to stand up and be the voice for the team
- Not taking resignations personally
I will talk through this to show how we as test managers can stay relevant in the current world and help drive our teams forward.
A bit about Simon:
Simon is heading up the Core QA team at EasyJet. In his career he has worked in various roles across IT from C++ developer, Scrum Master, Build Engineer before finally finding his passion in Testing. He's worked in various domains from CyberSecurity, Gaming/Gambling and now the Airline industry.
He has a keen interest in finding ways to improve the testing process and ensuring products are released with the highest possible quality. He also loves coaching/mentoring his team to be the best they can, enabling them to use all possible tools and skills to get their job done to the best of their ability
Simon is a well-known speaker and meetup organiser in the Software Testing world and also a keen advocate for companies to consider Neurodiversity as part of their inclusion programmes.
You can find out more and chat to Simon @
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-prior-0499372/
Personal blog - priorsworld.wordpress.com
Podcast - TestingPeers.com
Twitter @siprior

Baptism of Fire - Becoming a Modern Test Leader with Simon Prior.