Who are chapter leads and why do they need them?

I am Petr Zhukov, Head of QA at KODE. I once managed a small testing department, and my responsibilities included ensuring the comfort and professional development of employees. Gradually, the department grew several times, and my time was no longer enough for these tasks. That’s why I introduced the role of chapter leads – in the article I tell you who they are and why they are needed.

How it was before

Our department was once a department and consisted of only seven testing engineers. As a team leader, I managed the department and ensured the comfort and professional development of employees. Apart from weekly sentiment monitoring with HR, I had two main tools:

1. One-On-One (O3). Once every 1.5 months I held meetings where I talked with the employee about what he liked and didn’t like about work. This way I recognized points of discomfort and eliminated them.

2. Performance review (PR). Once every six months, I held meetings at which I assessed the employee’s work over the previous six months and took into account the team’s feedback. And then he checked his plans for the future and formed his personal development plan for the next six months.

Thanks to O3 and PR, I was an involved leader, felt the mood in the team and solved problems in a timely manner. Employees saw that they were important and needed not only within work tasks, but also developed in accordance with their ambitions. Of course, there was no perfect picture: not everyone was able to find an approach, not everyone was able to join the team.

Over time, the company grew. The testing department grew along with her, and technical support engineers also joined us. So we turned into a department in which there were no longer seven engineers – for example, now there are 32 of them, and the growth continues. As the number of employees increased, so did the time required for O3 and PR. I didn't have that much time. Also, in the department there was no line of people wanting to become a full-time lead, my deputy: everyone understood that changing the vector of development from technical to managerial in the long term means a drawdown in hard skills.

That's why I introduced a new role: chapter leads. In the article I will tell you who they are and why they are needed.

Who are chapter leads?

Chapter lead is an employee who:

• Performs his main job – in our case, the work of a testing engineer.

• Takes care of the comfort of chapter employees.

• Responsible for their professional development.

• Provides administrative support.

• Distributes resources within the chapter.

• Interviews candidates.

• Develops the QA department.

Chapter – this is a group of four to five engineers (ideally) for whom the chapter lead does all this.

We usually form a chapter based on a large project team, which includes a project QA lead and several engineers. We are also adding several employees from small projects. This grouping allows the chapter lead to spend less mental fuel, because he has already established trusting relationships with employees, knows the context of their work and project, and understands the technical and software levels. Sometimes you have to form a chapter exclusively from employees of small projects. This increases the load on the chapter lead because he has to immerse himself in the context of unfamiliar projects.

The role of chapter lead is not suitable for everyone, but for those who:

• Able and willing to communicate with people and identify their problems.

• Strives to be a mentor: share knowledge, help in development.

• Deeply understands company and department processes and can support them in his chapter.

Let's look at the responsibilities of a chapter lead

Comfort control

We identify the following sources of discomfort during work:

• Project and communication. On a project, an employee should like his responsibilities, subject area, processes, infrastructure and technology. Communication must be adequate, without toxicity or lengthy negotiations.

• Professional growth. An employee should feel the development of his skills. He must have the time and energy to learn new things, feel driven and have fun.

• Financial growth. For financial comfort, it is important that the employee knows the schedule for his income growth and agrees with it. This means, at a minimum, such a schedule must exist and the company needs to comply with it.

• Work equipment, workplace, work schedule and format. The equipment must cope with the tasks that the employee performs on the project, and the workplace, schedule and work format simply must be convenient.

The chapter lead works with sources of discomfort within the area of ​​responsibility and authority.

Example 1

The QC-engineer moved to a new project and completed onboarding. He worked on the project a little and realized that due to too flexible processes, priorities often change. For example, an approach is formally declared to cover a feature with checklists and compile a test run, but in reality it is not always implemented due to a shift in priority from quality to speed. And this depresses the engineer, who is used to doing quality work.

The chapter lead has several options:

• Understand why such processes developed on the project. What can be changed, what QA practices can be introduced so that the situation changes for the better. This is the most time-consuming option, but it will correct the root cause.

• Transfer the employee to another project with more streamlined processes. If there is such a project in the department, the employee will work on it under familiar conditions, and this will solve the problem.

• Change the employee's mindset. Explain that projects are different, and where there is constant pressure, you can try to learn how to ensure quality quickly and with minimal losses.

Example 2

A testing engineer works remotely. According to the configuration set, smoke testing on the project should take place on Android 14 and/or iPhone Pro Max. And he only has Android 12 or an iPhone of a different model for testing. As a result, he tests on his personal iPhone Pro Max, and for him the line between personal and work is blurred.

The chapter lead can send him a link to a description of the process of ordering equipment, and then make sure that the employee has correctly created a ticket for issuing the device and control the performers.

Example 3

An employee has just completed an internship and joined the team. Highly motivated, he works 10 hours a day and believes that he should do everything at the level of colleagues with two to three years of experience.

The chapter lead can explain to him that:

• Failure to maintain a work-life balance leads to burnout.

• The success of the probationary period is measured not by the employee’s internal feelings, but by the onboarding plan for three months.

• If a project manager says that a task needs to be completed in four hours, but the employee knows that he will take two days to do it, it is better for him to voice this directly on the daily report. On the one hand, this will allow you to maintain a balance between work and life, on the other hand, it will show the project manager the real capacity of the testing team.

Also, the chapter lead can transfer a yesterday's intern to a project with an experienced QA, who distributes tasks himself and serves as a filter between the project manager and the testing team.

Professional development of employees

Here the chapter leader plays the role of a driver rather than a teacher – he guides and helps to grow. He sets tasks taking into account the interests of the employee, the needs of the project and the processes adopted in the department, as well as:

• conducts Performance Review every six months;

• monitors progress according to the PDP – personal development plan;

• prepares an adaptation plan and conducts onboarding of newcomers to projects;

• sets tasks for technologization.

Example 1

An employee at the “test engineer” level—that’s what we call juniors—has already mastered all the skills at this level. He learned how to write test documentation as per requirements, manually test APIs through Postman, manipulate HTTP traffic through Charles, and understand SWR. Now he wants to move to the next level: to become a QC engineer – that’s what we call middles.

To give him space to learn new skills, the chapter lead assesses the needs of the project. Let's say he discovers a problem in the interaction between project management and testing – the information does not reach or is perceived incorrectly. The chapter lead understands how to solve the problem: draw up manual test plans, write test runs, coordinate them with project management and highlight risks, provide QA sign-off based on the test results and then conduct post-release monitoring. He correlates these tasks with the interests of the employee and offers to complete them. And to help, he sends links describing these processes from the department’s manual testing framework. This way the employee learns new skills and the project gets rid of the problem.

Example 2

The employee has mastered the manual processes of project quality management, or they have become uninteresting to him, and now he wants to develop technically. The chapter lead may invite him to study or consolidate experience in load testing on JMeter or Python+Locust. At the same time, he knows who has already performed load testing on what projects and can tell you who to contact, and will also recommend sections in the knowledge base, training courses, books or articles on the topic. As a result, the specialist will gain new experience, which will count against him when increasing his grade, and the benefit from his research will be useful not only for one project, but also for the department as a whole.

Administrative support

The chapter lead agrees for the chapter employees:

• vacations,

• work format – full-time, remote or hybrid,

• time off, overtime and other schedule changes,

• business trips,

• sick leave.

It also verifies technologization hours.

Head of QA does not have complete context for each project. In order to make a balanced and reasoned decision on an employee’s vacation that will not affect production, he will have to immerse himself in the context of the project. For example, understand the engineer’s area of ​​responsibility and check if there is someone to temporarily transfer his responsibilities to. The chapter lead is aware of the context of the project, so he can reasonably agree on the required dates for the employee or offer an alternative.

Interviews

The chapter lead interviews candidates. He gets acquainted with the vacancy, selects resumes from those sent by the recruiter, conducts an interview and gives feedback to the manager. Head of QA analyzes the feedback of the chapter lead and the recruiter and makes a decision based on it.

Since the Head of QA’s attention is needed only at the final stage, the testing department has time to review more candidates and quickly go through the stages from the first contact with the applicant to his employment.

Development of the QA department

Participation in the chapter leads club

The Chapter Lead Club is a meeting of the management of the testing department, where we discuss news and development tasks once every two weeks.

The main planning tool for such meetings is the Kanban board in Jira and the associated Gantt chart, which display the development of the department from the resource, process and technical sides. Now we have three vectors: professional development of testing engineers, increasing production efficiency where we can influence it, and researching new technologies.

Goals:

1. Make the development of the testing department more transparent.

2. Give employees the opportunity to suggest areas for development.

3. Set ambitious and difficult to achieve goals and identify key results using the OKR methodology to increase employee motivation and maintain focus on priority goals.

We also need clarity in the directions of the department’s development: what we are striving for in terms of technologies, processes, hardware and skills. The Chapter Leads Club allows you to plan and visualize this, for example:

• Create a Fullstack Quality Engineer position.

• Change the fall internship program.

• Describe the process of testing conversational products.

• Update the fleet of KGD test devices.

• Implement a load testing “box” via Jmeter.

• Improve Performance Review.

Participation in the QA club

The QA Club is a meeting of testing engineers to improve technical and soft skills, exchange experiences and communicate with colleagues outside of project activities.

The chapter lead can act as a driver for the QA club. For example, he can study the Heisenbug conference program, select one block or several reports in different blocks and initiate joint viewing. And after watching, he will start a discussion, involve everyone in it and moderate the discussion.

Participation in internships

In our company, QA internships are held approximately once a year. They come in two types:

• Mentoring, in which the trainee is taught by a mentor.

• Lecture halls, where a group of interns listen to lectures, just like at a university.

During a lecture internship, the chapter lead can first help with attracting the audience – he conducts live broadcasts, writes articles and posts on social networks. Then he checks test items, interviews trainees and prepares lectures. During training, he teaches classes, grades homework, attends the final project defense, and makes hiring decisions.

During a mentorship internship, the chapter lead takes on the role of mentor. He makes an individual development plan for the mentee and moves with him according to this plan – corrects, suggests, notes successes.

The chapter system allows you to free up the Head of QA's time for more strategic tasks, evenly distribute responsibilities in the department and maintain an attentive attitude to the needs of employees.