I enjoyed listening to Gary Hawkes and Parveen Khan during SQEC Module 4 Lesson 2.
I took notes as I watched and listened, and had some reflections.
They dive deep into the different experiences of who has managed and supported them throughout their careers and what that meant for their role at the time.
If you're managed by someone who doesn't have a quality background they recommend having conversations about bringing quality into the engineering process, particularly when that was defined goal at an individual level. A leader who has engineering accountability but doesn't have a quality background, such as an engineering manager from a developer background, really wants quality too. So it makes the conversations easier to focus on bringing quality in.
Also, education is key if you're the only official quality person in the team. This can come from information shared in a standup, particularly sharing more feedback that developers have ever had before. And this is where influence comes in because you've built up this relationship around feedback. So developers can end up influencing others based on the feedback they've received from you. For example, they could end up influencing product people. So developers can support quality engineers in more ways than we might think.
Don't be afraid to ask for help and support. Ask for feedback on your goals from peers as well as your line manager. Don't wait for it and ask for specific feedback.
Defo recommend you watching this convo when you get the chance.
How about you, what various people support you as a quality engineer? How much do they understand your goals and how do they support you? How might they support your in other ways?
