How I created and launched a successful community of practice - Empowering the team through a QA Academy

Uncover the steps to create a thriving QA Academy, including stakeholder engagement and curriculum development [View this email in your browser]( by Cristina Carrageis | [Read online at Ministry of Testing]( Where did the journey to a community of practice begin? Let me tell you how and where I have taken the initiative by creating a Quality Assurance (QA) Academy in the company where I’ve worked since 2022. I was developing a career plan where I wanted to improve my technical skills and aim to be a go-to person for the QA / engineering team. I was getting there by attending several courses, such as AWS Fundamentals, and Git courses and engaging with experts. I was feeling more confident about the products and flows that my team was developing for our company. When the role of the QA manager appeared for internal and external applications. I didn’t apply for the first round, conscious that I wouldn’t have a chance with three potential candidates who were all QA Leads. One of the QA Leads mentioned that he didn’t apply because he didn’t want to be a QA Manager or have any skills for it. My Head of QA mentioned in our regular All QA meeting that it was still a role to fill. So I thought to myself, this could be an opportunity to show my skills. I have a friend of mine who is a QA Manager and my mentor as well. They advised me to apply for the role since I already had the right skills and my Head of QA already knew my work and my value. Finding the courage to go for it So. I sent an email explaining my motivation, the reasons for being selected as a QA Manager, and some questions to be answered by my Head of QA. Since I have experience as a QA Lead in the past, leadership and communication skills were the easiest for me. After receiving the email, my Head of QA answered it and booked a call to clarify everything and make sure that I went forward with the application as a QA Manager. The same call was the first round interview with him in which he explained to me the next steps. I was to have the next interview with the Vice President (VP) of Engineering. The interview arrived and the proposal from the VP of Engineering was to have a 3-month transition plan, moving from being a Senior QA engineer (current role) to a QA Manager. One of the topics in that plan was to mentor and coach the QA team. How the community of practice was born I proposed creating a training program and my Head of QA suggested it was called the QA Academy and the volunteer role as Dean of the Academy was waiting for me to fill. Of course, it was one of the plans that I proposed, and that role was for me! Having previous experience in organizing, planning, and launching a Portuguese QA Academy for new QAs from various backgrounds. Here I was to do the same, but changing the scope, which was to reduce the silo inside the QA team and provide more technical knowledge. Let’s start with how it was done: Define the plan and identify the stakeholders Planning: - Book calls with the Head of QA and with the VP of Engineering (or equivalent roles); - Prepare yourself to share your thoughts and ideas about the Academy, what you think might work and what the outcomes are; - Listen to their ideas and incorporate them where appropriate. Preparation: - Take notes and write in a shared document, which can be a Word document or a shared space (make sure the first draft is private) Syllabus development: - Define the Topics: Product, Test Techniques, and Automation Frameworks - Add feedback forms after each session, to collect honest feedback from the wider stakeholders when appropriate. In this case: - stakeholders: Head of QA - Audience: QA Team - Define the Syllabus - After initial conversations and drafts written, document the actual syllabus for the QA Academy - The Syllabus should have the following elements: - Motivation - A clear audience identified 👋 TestBash is our annual conference happening in September in Brighton, UK. As we like to say, our network is your network, we'd love for you to join us. We will have 2 days of learning and community as testing professionals share what they know about testing, AI and more! [Explore the TestBash Experience]( Curriculum Definition: Curriculum with the topics to cover (can be adjusted to other companies, as described below in the table if you want to try this process) [Table of Topics, Scope, and Observations: 1. Product • Scope: • Provide QAE knowledge about their projects to understand how they interact. • Observations: • E.g.: ‘How does the customer use our products?’ • “How do I test the Data Analysis?” 2. Testing Techniques • Scope: • Different test case designs and test techniques such as equivalence partitioning, boundary value analysis, exploratory testing, ad-hoc testing, and decision table testing. • Discuss how QA fits into Agile methodologies, emphasizing iterative testing, user stories, and collaboration with development teams. • Observations: • E.g.: Exploratory Testing tutorial with practical approaches. 3. Automation Testing and Test Frameworks • Scope: • Provide hands-on training on using automation tools and BDD for automated web testing, covering test script creation, test execution, and reporting. • Explore different automation frameworks like Data-Driven, Keyword-Driven, and Behavior-Driven Development (BDD). • Observations: • Ex: How to start BDD in our automation, or Component testing practical session with mixed groups (Developers and QAE).] - Identification of the management and responsibilities: who will be responsible for inviting the speakers, and will organize and update the Academy, e.g. Dean of the Academy and or the Head of QA? - What are the outcomes of it? E.g. Is it expected that the QA’s will be confident and take the best out of this? Preparation work: Marketing work (optional) - After writing the Syllabus I added some ideas like preparing a launch email of the QA Academy for the team announcing the first speaker. I’ve asked help from my yoga partner, who works in the Marketing department, to create a template to be used. I told her my ideas and she quickly did it. - It’s really important to have good connections inside the company, it makes it easier to ask for help. - Define template emails for inviting speakers and announcing sessions. The First Speakers - Everything was prepared for the first speaker. Fortunately, I had one volunteer, the Head of QA. We had the topic covered and the days needed to prepare for the launch day. - Close to the date, it was announced in the team meeting that the QA Academy would be launched, and an email would be sent afterward, to get people ready. - I emphasized the message in the email that the Academy was built for us QAs and it was really important to engage and be honest about it. - I sent the launch email using the template given to me by my colleague with an acknowledgment message to the Head of QA. A description of the topic, with date and time, and informed that if the time were not convenient, due to time zones, it would be recorded and stored in the shared team space. The Big Day (Launch Day) - The day had arrived, it was a success! - After the session, which was mostly theory with some examples, but a promised practical session to be booked, a feedback form was launched, and Microsoft Forms did work well. From 38 QAs, in 1 week I collected 19 responses. At first, it didn't seem too great. But my Head of QA mentioned it is great in 1 week to see so many responses. - People liked the session and wanted to see more. The Academy was also positively mentioned in a retrospective annual review of the QA team. The Community of Practice launch All the speakers invited so far are internal peers. Only one has proposed to do a mix of sessions for small groups of QAs and Developers, which I’ve guided to be a success and take some ideas from. The first mixed session had eight individuals, composed of two QAs and six Developers. We continue to have more sessions about Automation and how the QAs support component tests for the Developers. This format caught the attention of the VP of Engineering who shared details in an annual retrospective to the Engineering department. It highlighted how an individual can have an idea, suggest it, and use it as an initiative that can help and support everyone better to deliver a product with quality to our customers and increase the visibility and benefit to the company. Defining quality metrics for the QA Academy After the first sessions and since this initiative was a pilot, we defined metrics that will help measure success. I defined two main metrics of Production and the QA themselves and then sub-metrics for each of them are presented below: Production metrics: - Decreasing production issues - open bugs reported in production have been decreasing. - Customer Feedback: the quality should increase and our customers should notice it and we can request feedback on how the product responds to their expectations. This is a golden rule but needs to remind us that the product must respond to the customer's expectations and how efficiently any issues are resolved. - Time-to-Resolution: As soon as the issues are reported, they can be solved efficiently and with quality. In this case, is possible to analyze if they are applying lessons learned from the previous situation. - Bug Severity Metrics: decreasing the severity of the opened issues. Quality Assurance Engineer metrics: Note: These metrics are mostly subjective, it requires adding a rating scale to it, from 1 to 5, similar to the sprint score of each team member, that is given at the end of its sprint. Required involvement and support from management and team members to provide feedback. - Proactiveness Metric: Evaluate the QA's performance as improved in terms of proactiveness by suggesting improvements in their teams or being part of the motivator that triggers the team to start improving the work. - Knowledge Metric: Evaluating the QA’s knowledge about the test techniques, automation, and being involved in code reviews has increased. - Confident Metric: Evaluate whether the QA’s confidence has improved by elaborating case studies presentations to the teams, being involved in code reviews, and elaborating documentation with the developers, including both perspectives. - Efficient Testing Metric: Evaluate whether the QA’s efficiency has improved in terms of effectiveness, this meant to be inherent metrics, which could be by increasing exploratory tests, automation, more issues opened in the Dev or Test environments, more component tests, creating more effective tests that could identify potential issues. - Test Pass Rates: Assess the success rates of regression testing after QA Academy. Ensure we can define it as more than 95% passed to focus on CORE features. Bear in mind that the metrics should be defined collaboratively, with the COO and/or CTO, and Head of QA, who are your stakeholders and they will help you to succeed. Remember, if you are creating an initiative to improve the QA team it should improve the quality of the products and services developed. The metrics can’t be fixed. Every year the market and the needs change so keep the habit of revisiting those every quarter, to make sure they are still accurate, look for refinements, and provide the measurements needed. Takeaways: - Don’t be afraid to share your ideas and thoughts - Involve more experienced people, such as your line manager or Head of department when realizing ideas and developing them - Reuse past experiences. I’d already been involved in organizing and creating a syllabus for a QA Academy in Portugal, so I knew how to start and there is no magic recipe, use your experience and request feedback. - Define a consistent plan on what you want to improve and how it will be done - Define Metrics to evaluate the success of the Academy / Training - Define who will be responsible for it, this requires commitment and dedication at first - Skills really important to have: Mentoring, coaching, good communication, and good listening and Leadership. Good luck! "I found a community in the Ministry of Testing, a form of belonging which helped me grow personally and in my career." — Kim Knup [Upgrade your software testing career with Ministry of Testing]( [Website]( [LinkedIn]( [YouTube]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( Copyright © 2024 Ministry of Testing, All rights reserved. You have opted to join this email list. 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