PMP Certification worth in QA?

🙋 Questions
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I have 12 Years of experience in QA Automation in multiple skill-sets. Is it worth to achieve PMP Certification for QA Manager role? Please suggest, Thanks!!

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Hi @nagar

Perhaps it would help us a bit if you shared what you are hoping to get out of the PMP certification?

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Hi @mwinteringham
Currently I am working as QA Automation Lead, now I am planning to move to next ladder ‘QA Manager’. So I am eager to know, is there any weightage of PMP Certification for achieving ‘QA Manager’ role or getting QA Automation technology certification help me for same. Please suggest

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I have led several projects/products in different roles(automation, testing, business, and technical operations, support). I am as well looking into a manager role as a step up in my career.

Here are what questions I got in a recent interview(second round with the Head of the department, an Architect, and a Project Manager) at the biggest bank in Switzerland, the largest wealth management company in the world:

  • Have you managed people in different locations and cultures (offshore in different continents/time zones)? Would this be a problem for you to collaborate with them? Give me examples from the past of how you have dealt with situations like this.
  • Do you have experience in managing people? What would you do if a tester came to you and asked for a raise otherwise she’ll quit?
  • How would you take care of people’s careers? How would you solve a conflict between testers or test and other people?
  • Have you been part of and led a testing guild(organized and led training, workshops, and talks)?
  • You’re supposed to test for half of the time and manage a team of 10, how would you balance it?
  • Can you tell me about a time were you organized, planned, and created a testing strategy for a large-scale project?
  • How do you align the testing strategy with multiple people? How does your strategy get quickly understood and followed (btw. they were expecting massive amounts of detailed written documentation).
  • Do you have db2 experience? Most of our operations are around this uncommon system.
  • What is the biggest challenge you’ve encountered at work and how did you solve it?
  • You’d have to do yearly or twice-a-year evaluations of all the testers, would you be comfortable assessing them?
  • Reporting to the department lead; do you have experience in reporting testing progress from the entire team to the higher management; how about doing presentations?
  • There are multiple departments with different approaches to testing, and we’re trying to find a way to align them; in this role we expect a person with leadership skills to work across departments to try to find common ground. Would you be up for it?

Here’s the position: UBS hiring Test Engineer & Chapter Lead, in Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland | LinkedIn
The first interview was about my skills as a tester, automation experience, and leadership. The interviewers were the Business Analysis manager and another Test Manager(chapter lead) from a different department.

I would not think a PMP would have helped in this case.
But it depends on what sort of management position you want to reach: the business, domain, departments, location, people, or things you have to manage.

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Thanks a lot!! @ipstefan

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Hi @nagar - PMP may be an overkill unless you want to move out of QA and become an overall Project or Program manager, and that too if you do not have any relevant experience. PMP is more about principles, terminologies, techniques etc which may not be fully useful in day to day running of business.

For a QA manager role, few things i recommend you can do and in no specific order

  1. Have sound knowledge of Automation Frameworks, tools, languages and be the Go To guy- Be well versed with the latest, most effective Automation frameworks across different forms - Mobile, Web, API, UI, any other
  2. Write or provide inputs to a good automation test strategy - Take the opportunity to write or provide valuable inputs to the Automation Test strategy taking into account the needs to the project. This will give you an experience of what all to consider, what must be included, and what not besides others.
  3. Build a successful team - This is the most important - Building and maintaining a cohesive team, who are passionate and driven by excellence to deliver as per the plan and strategy. I say this is important because, people are varied and sometime difficult to satisfy. You must maintain a balance. However good a strategy you have, without the right team you cannot achieve what you aim for.
  4. Read Books - Read a lot of books and make notes. Some books that have helped me a lot - ‘The Professional by Subroto Bagchi’, The Expert Test Manager, Advanced Test Manager, Leading Quality, Lessons Learned in Software Testing : context driven, and many good books.
  5. Follow Industry Leaders , Network and Participate in Meet-ups - All these will help as it will give a lot of context and lessons to be learned that the leaders will share.
  6. Market your achievements - Tell your managers, and the world your achievements in the project and that you are now ready for the next level.

These are some of my thoughts. Other experts can add.

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Thanks!! @kkk Your thoughts really helped me to understand. Now I am pretty much clear.

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