From Shadow Work to Spotlight: Making Your QA Impact Undeniable
Your manager asks you, "What did you accomplish this quarter…?" and your mind goes blank—trying to remember every feature, test plan, and testing result you've produced. The work is ‘invisible’; catching critical bugs before no one sees them and saving time and money that nobody sees, hence ‘The QA Curse.' Meanwhile, software developers ship features, and product owners show revenue metrics. According to the renowned P.I.E. research study of corporations, 10% of your promotion is based on performance and 60% is based on visibility. So working hard doesn’t get you promoted! The challenge is how to get visibility and show the business impact from all your effort. Swati suggests you fill the gap by using a system of tracking QA wins weekly through her ‘QA Accomplishment Tracker.’ Use this to build promotion stories and business impact to get the visibility you deserve!
Swati Shah has been testing software systems for over 15+ years and has worked for Spotify, Warner Bros Digital Labs, and NYC startups. She is passionate about testing on innovative consumer-facing products that impact millions of lives and is also an entrepreneur building scalable digital products for the QA community. Swati's QA roles have taken her to Italy, Sweden, and Asia to instill testing strategies, perform E2E testing. and deliver a great user experience. She has also spoken at Agile Testing Days in Europe and is involved in the NYC testing community as well as volunteers at testing conferences to share and learn from others.