Communication-Driven

In a complex project that requires hundreds of developers working together, transparency in communication is crucial. It fosters understanding in everything we do. As a QA Manager I try to be as transparent as possible.

Verbal Communication in my experience can be difficult for all walks of life and I have experience coaching others around that fear while also holding their hand and mediating around difficult conversations. We're all different in our ability to comfortably communicate and I think there's a balance to be struck between coaching that ability or finding ways around it.

I have experience with coaching around verbal communication and making sure it happens proactively and diplomatically.

Non-Verbal Communication can sometimes be equally difficult as verbal communication as a lot can get "lost in translation" through text, emails, chats, etc. As a manager I have proof read emails, chat messages, quality reports, etc. to assist with making sure People communicate what they are aiming to communicate and not be misunderstood. Within the wider game development process, I think it's vital for QA to have good verbal and non-verbal communication skills in order to bring awareness of the many things we work with.

Being proactive is also important for QA and can be challenging as QA often deals with pointing out flaws and issues in other people's work. I have coached around these things as well while also coaching around difficult truths that QA may sometimes need to communicate about a project trending in the wrong direction.

Knowing the existing or creating a new comms structure can help with understanding which key stakeholders need to be informed of what and (through the likes of a RACI matrix for example), I have been involved in these sort of discussions in the past.

It's also important to understand your audience. Your communication towards senior company leadership will often look very different than your communication towards peers.

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I have experience with coaching around the differences in communication depending on the stakeholder as well.

QA fundamentally deals with identifying, tracking, visualizing and highlight risks within a project or a development process. Hence the ability to quantify risks is super important.I have done this myself in the past to other stakeholders and have also coached QA Leads in how to approach the communication around risks.