How do I set my Q&A to private?

What should I look for when hiring a QA manager?

• I am a semi non-technical founder and am bringing a QA manager onto my team. If you're hired a QA manager before, what are some things you look for? He/she should be able to set our entire QA strategy, work with engineering, hire people, etc but what are the 4 or 5 most important things to focus on during recruiting?

• Answer:

  Before you interview potential QA managers, you should interview yourself to fully understand what type of QA resource you’re looking for. Here’s what you should ask yourself or your team: What is your desired quality level?You should determine your own approach to Quality, and then hire a QA manager who understands it and can help you achieve it. Are you fine with your site or app being a little rough around the edges or do you want it to be essentially perfect, with no fatals or errant pixels? If the latter, then you’ll need more experienced QA resources with experience in automation, and you’ll also need a larger QA org than the former run-and-gun approach to development. Does your current quality level meet your desired quality level? If not, then you’re going to have to invest more heavily in QA for a period of time until the quality level meets your expectations and can keep up as the technology base increases. What are the different responsibilities you need this resource to perform today? Responsibilities of an individual contributor (test planning, black box testing, automation development, performance testing, security testing) differ from the key responsibilities of a QA manager (hiring, firing, process improvement, communication, persuasion). Know exactly what you need today and interview for it explicitly. What upcoming responsibilities will you need this resource to perform? Are you looking for a hired gun who will be doing the same thing in a year, or someone who can scale and grow with the technology stack, or grow an org? If you know you’ll need these things in the near future then gauge experience or potential when you interview candidates. Will this resource be managing people, and if so, how many? If you only expect the resource to manage one other person then you may not need prior management experience since they’ll be functioning largely as an individual contributor anyway. If you expect them to manage more people then you need to interview them more heavily for past management experience, and find evidence that they have experience operating an org, not just hiring people. Don’t assume that a great QA engineer will make a great manager. Once you’ve asked yourself these questions you’ll have a better idea what you’re looking for and can probe candidates for experience in the specific areas you know you need. If you’re hiring for a QA manager who will run a QA org with 3+ QA staff, then I’d look for solid evidence of these things, at a minimum: Deep (IC) QA experience. Even if you’re hiring someone to fill a management role and don’t expect them to be doing testing themselves, make sure they were a kick-ass tester in their day. Get some references from them and find some that will provide evidence why a candidate was better at testing than their peers. Coaching and performance management experience. Get examples of how they’ve handled under-performing employees. What techniques did they use to raise their performance level, or raise the bar on the quality of their team? Process improvement experience. Does their team simply sweep, or do they actually eliminate the source of dirt? You want to find out what their team is doing other than just finding and filing bugs. What systemic issues has the candidate discovered and what strategies did they employ to get the root causes resolved? Backbone. More than most other managers, a QA manager has to go toe-to-toe with the heads of other disciplines. They need the backbone to withhold QA signoff (and release) of code that doesn’t meet the org’s quality standards. Find evidence that they’ve done so, and aren’t just a doormat. If you’re not confident you can adequately assess the depth of their experience in these areas, then get help interviewing. If there is someone outside of your company (e.g. mentor, advisor) you think has deeper experience in QA than anyone in your company, ask if they’ll help interview candidates for you occasionally.