First 100 Days

One of the first things I've done at most companies is to try and talk to as many stakeholders as possible, prioritizing my QA Team and Department Leads. Find out what's working, what's not working - a SWOT analysis of sorts. Assess cross-department collaboration, available documentation, what dependencies are being met and which aren't, assessing the state of test coverage, process effectiveness, etc.

Next it's important to look at the data. What's been tracked, what's missing and what's the state of the project based on what's being tracked. Assess Roadmaps, the current trajectory and future predictions based on available data. Establish Dashboards, track new metrics, evaluate and have discussions around findings.

This part is about digging deeper after formal introductions have taken place. Focusing on things that haven't been working, and the root cause for that. 

Establish what's important within the project to get done right away vs. what can wait.

Figure out where there are gaps within the QA Department to deliver on expectations and how to solve for those gaps. Identify quick wins in the things that can be optimized.

Re-Align QA goals with the current development stage and re-align priorities alongside stakeholders.

Essentially: Everything else. Making sure role expectations are in place, continuing with familiarizing with the team and their unique individual challenges, digging deeper into QA Specific challenges (whether it's around People or Processes) and start coaching, addressing issues, expectation management, etc from there.