Let’s make it clear from the start: there is no one all-purpose formula for quality management of the QA team. Nevertheless, there’s always some base that allows project managers managing the testers competently and effectively.
A Team Is a Diversity
Every single one of us has own personal strengths and weaknesses. The manager’s job is to analyze, find personality traits, and try to motivate the QA lab precisely through the prism of his work dispositions.
And don’t worry if some of your subordinates are lagging in their work. After all, if there are problems, there are strengths somewhere anyway. With ideal planning, each employee focuses on one thing and is involved in the common process of software improvement. This process should be managed in such a way that every member of your team is complementary.
Someone is good at bug searching, while someone can write comprehensible bug reports. These people should team-up. Hence, their productivity will have been improved and they will be able to do the work three at once.
Of course, there are some complications. For example, if the team has only one specialist in a specific area, others may not be able to understand it properly. And if this particular specialist takes a vacation or gets sick, there will be some sort of chaos. The rest of the team will face the tasks which solutions won’t be within their technical competence.
What can be done in such a situation? Organize training on time! And this training can be carried out exactly by this expert. For example, webinars and presentations will increase the expertise of the entire QA team.
Delegation Helps to Avoid Subjectivity
Remember that not everything boring to you will be boring to the rest of your team. If you don’t like API testing, don’t think that your colleague will also dislike it. It’s better to ask and discuss what someone likes, and who wants to focus on. Let’s not forget: there are no interesting and not interesting tasks. They are either appropriate or not.
You should delegate only unimportant tasks. If the task is urgent but very critical – it needs to be delegated; thus, you will have time for some more important things. And when delegating, it is extremely important to define the task, control the execution, as well as the possibility of decomposition to break down into subtasks.
If the project manager will delegate complex tasks to testers, they will feel their importance in the QA department. If the task is unimportant, the employee will think that he/she is just one of the general mechanisms, and doesn’t understand why he/she should do this or that. And this leads to a general decline in work motivation. In such a situation, it is necessary to explain to employees the ultimate high goal, the firm’s global plans, and so on.
And, lastly, don’t forget that all the tasks handed out need to be kept in one place. If you dictate to one person, write to another on Viber, and send a link to Jira to a third person, you can quickly get confused. You can also try doing daily reports – there will be an extra reason for stimulation.
And in general, the global key to everything – knowing the traits of each employee and the proper distribution of tasks.
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