Congratulations! You're the New Test Manager

When creating an entirely new QA organization, where do you start? Although establishing QA processes and standard practices is important, you must communicate with and obtain buy-in from QA staff, developers, customers, and business analysts. Walk in Karl Shearer’s footsteps as he describes the initial stages of QA's formation at Erie Insurance, the challenges and roadblocks he faced, and, ultimately, the successes he has enjoyed. From organizational issues, the mission statement, and job descriptions to selecting and hiring QA staff, you’ll take away a checklist for starting up a test group or improving your test organization. Employing a risk-based approach to define the levels of testing and a multi-pass system test strategy, Karl established basic test processes. Then, he added defect tracking, automation, and requirements management to the mix and designed templates for all QA deliverables. If you just are starting out, growing your test organization, or simply looking for new ideas, join Karl for a discussion of the issues and challenges he faced and, most importantly, the actions he took to create a new QA group.

• Basic steps that need to be taken to set up the QA infrastructure
• Lessons learned in staffing a new QA department (e.g., organization structure, job descriptions)
• Sample QA deliverables and metrics that allow you to add value early