In case you missed it, the Ministry of Testing has been changing, our professional membership has changed to be more balanced out. It’s not just a place to seek content, it’s a where testing professionals come to learn in a variety of ways.
Part of this is research, which is often collaborative, with the people. Some of it is visible, other parts not so much. Sometimes it shows up in the events we host. Other times it’s in our testing trends. Often it is in more private conversations.
So, as part of this, we’ve sensed a real gap and need to explore leadership and for the rest of 2025, as minimum we’re aiming to dive deep into what this means for all of us.
We’re hosting a Leading with Quality event for people in leadership roles the day before TestBash Brighton. For Professional Members we will also be creating a more private space on our Slack to help us connect.
However, the reason for this post is to explore questions that you would love answers to. As we have conversations with people leading with quality. We’d love to know what you feel is important.
What are your challenges as individual practitioners?
What are your challenges with the industry overall?
Where do you want to see change happening?
As leaders, where do you feel lost? Or where do you feel you need guidance?
Who would you like me or MoT to have conversations with?
What questions would you like to see us posing to leaders?
OK, so doing an off the top of my head drop of my current challenges:
Key frustration is the effort and willpower it takes to influence the quality decisions in an organisation. They could be:
– Budgets, whether that is Quality production spec test environments, tooling, training, MOT membership etc. There is duplicity with QA when it comes to spending as we can be seen as a cost financially, not a saving - even though day to day we are seen as a saving
– Backlog prioritisation, especially with aged bugs, important to QA but never get prioritised so the list grows and then becomes a big job that no-one has time to review
– Cross team buy in to quality metrics, even when we create them with the stakeholders, QA are the only ones championing them
So my main question would be, what tactics (however devious ) have leaders employed to influence stakeholders to buy into our quality improvement goals?
An internal looking question I suppose would be, where have they seen the biggest returns on continuous improvement within QA? How did they achieve it?
Also running a team over multiple products and skills, how do they battle squashing silos of knowledge appearing?
What continues to interest me wrt leadership in test & quality is
Leadership skills as an individual contributor
Career paths for experienced testing professionals
Aligning with company leadership and company strategy
Leading testing activities outside “classic” functional testing
Most of all, how to enable more (diverse …) people to build their leadership skills. Where I am, we are short of people who have experience in the above. Let’s give them the opportunity and know how. Let’s grow their aspiring leadership mindset.
I find challenging to influence people on quality from different professional backgrounds.
I currently work closely with co-founders who are not technical people, but very close to everyone in the business. They often measure business success in outputs and numbers. I would be interested to learn how to communicate to stakeholders who are not in engineering in a simple and accessible way.
Are there any specific techniques I can learn?
Is there any pattern I should look for?
How do I share and show the value to them when we not necessarily speak the same tech language.
I am aware I should know what’s important to them and communicate that way. At the moment, I am wriggling out a bit and adapting to every moment I need to communicate to them.
What can I do to get a raise and other types of hard appreciation? And appreciation at all.
Somehow my testing stays unnoticed and undiscussed. My coworkers know how well I do my work, but I fear not my manager. It’s not a testing one.
As I think that this might me related to cultural specifics, I add that I’m working in Germany.
Anglo-Saxon and others culture might be different.
) have leaders employed to influence stakeholders to buy into our quality improvement goals?
…) people to build their leadership skills. Where I am, we are short of people who have experience in the above. Let’s give them the opportunity and know how. Let’s grow their aspiring leadership mindset.