Moving from a tester to a team lead position means spending around half of your working time on management tasks while retaining hands-on testing. The biggest challenges are interpersonal: conflicts within the team, skeptical colleagues and cultural differences in distributed teams clearly outweigh technical hurdles.
Key Takeaways
- Those who go from tester to manager are effectively taking on half a new job for which no leadership course really prepares them.
- Frontline management does not automatically mean giving up hands-on testing: Andrea Jensen continues to spend around half of her working time actively testing.
- Colleagues you have known for years often react to a promotion within the same company with skepticism and openly question the new role.
- If you want to know whether leadership is the right thing for you, you should lead a small project or build up a community of practice before accepting an official management position.
- A move into management is not a one-way street: anyone who realizes that the role is not right can switch back to a specialist position without this meaning failure.
From tester to QA lead: How the change often begins
The step into a leadership role is rarely planned. In Andrea Jensen’s case, it was the result of an operational idea: instead of having testers scattered across individual product teams, the company wanted to set up its own test team. Such a team already existed in other divisions of the company, but not in hers. As a result, she was asked whether she would like to take over the management.
The trigger was not pure career thinking, but professional saturation. Testing continued to be fun, but the day-to-day work became increasingly similar from day to day. There were always new features and technologies, but the desire for a different kind of challenge grew.
An important factor was the trial period. The employer offered to try out the Functional Lead role first, without an immediate promotion and without a new title. This security takes the pressure out of the decision. You don’t have to make a final commitment before you know if the role is right for you.
Why a leadership course doesn’t prepare you for the real world
Theoretical training does not adequately reflect the practice of a leadership role. A leadership course completed in advance provided models and blueprints, but did not meet the day-to-day reality that followed.
The comparison is with a degree course: on paper, you learn how something should ideally work. The reality is usually very different. This is especially true for interpersonal situations, which cannot be squeezed into a model.
The first concrete tasks are often unspectacular and unexpected at the same time. In Andrea’s case, the very first management task was signing off vacation requests on the second day. Team members only submitted their requests when the role became official. Little things like that suddenly pop up without you expecting them.
The interpersonal side is the real challenge
The biggest leap is not in the technical side, but in dealing with people. Even in the first week, you may receive a message like “I don’t really want to talk to you.” As a new team leader who is already unsure how the team will react, this hits you hard.
The response to this is not a technique, but an attitude: take a deep breath, don’t answer immediately, take your time. In Andrea’s case, the conversation ended up happening anyway.
Even within a fresh team, personalities clash. Andrea describes a classic storming phase according to Tuckman, in which everyone checks each other out. A concrete conflict arose when one tester accidentally took the test work away from another. In fact, it was a misunderstanding, but in human terms it was a real spat, exacerbated by different personalities, cultures and languages.
I actually find the whole interpersonal thing very difficult as a team leader.
Andrea Jensen
Old colleagues first have to accept the new role
Anyone who is promoted within the same company is often met with skepticism by long-standing colleagues. The new role is initially viewed with suspicion. Some don’t know whether they should take the promotion seriously.
Andrea experienced being questioned as to why she was privileged to decide certain things. In one case, a person repeatedly claimed not to have received an announcement email and asked where it said that she was now team leader. The impulse to have to justify or prove the promotion is understandable, but inappropriate.
This friction is particularly painful when it comes from people with whom you previously got on well. It usually dissipates over time, but is part of the transition. Plan for it as a normal part of the role change, not as a personal failure.
Frontline management: Why the 50/50 mix works
A leadership role doesn’t have to mean the end of hands-on testing. Andrea’s model is called frontline management: around half of her working time is spent on organization, vacation requests and coordination, while the other half is reserved for real testing.
This combination keeps the role attractive. Organizing meetings and signing off on applications all day would not make you happy in the long run. The technical part anchors the manager in the day-to-day business.
The appeal of the role lies in the extended scope for creativity. As a single tester in a product team, there was often a lack of influence. Good ideas from conferences could not be implemented because there were no other testers and developers did not feel like it. In the lead role, the opportunity to work towards quality awareness in development grows.
What quality culture means in everyday life
The success of a QA lead is shown by whether quality thinking is accepted by the team without it having to be ordered. An example: A team member was asked to quickly approve a purely technical change because there was supposedly nothing to test. The answer was a clear no, combined with the suggestion to briefly discuss the change in the source code after the meeting.
Moments like this are the real goal. They show that the lead’s convictions have rubbed off, not because they say so, but because the team thinks they make sense.
The long-term goal is for testers to be involved in the development process from the very beginning. Software should not be thrown over the fence at the end of the lifecycle with the request to add quality to it afterwards. In the ideal scenario, it is immediately clear who the tester, developer and product manager are for each new project.
Leading distributed teams across continents
Physical and cultural distance remains a constant difficulty, even after a year in the role. Andrea’s team is remote and divided: one half is based in Germany, the other in India, with a different cultural background.
There is a noticeable lack of face-to-face meetings. A planned meeting fell through due to the visa authorities. It would be important to meet in the same room, especially with different cultures, but it cannot be forced. Anyone leading a distributed team should actively plan for such encounters and take into account that they may fail.
It’s difficult without mentoring and exchange
Companies often do not offer a structured curriculum for promotion. Those who are promoted effectively take on a new job part-time, which first has to be learned.
The lack of official support is best filled by yourself. Andrea approached an experienced person from the leadership team during the trial phase whose management style appealed to her and asked her for mentoring. There is also an informal exchange group with others who have also not been in management for long: coffee together, tips, mutual questions.
A group of like-minded people at a similar stage of development helps you through difficult phases. It’s not about doing everything the same way as the others, but about getting a different perspective and new ideas. The testing community is also good for this: through platforms and meetups, you come across approaches that can be tried out.
How to find out whether leadership suits you
You can hardly make a serious decision before you have tried out the role. Seeing someone in a lead position and being in it yourself are two completely different experiences.
Instead of brooding, create small test fields. Lead a small project. Bring testers from different product teams together for a knowledge transfer. Build a community of practice. If people come and join in, this is a good indicator that they basically want to work with you, a key aspect of leadership.
These experiments answer the real question: do you like bringing people together and motivating them? Sometimes the role feels like that of a cheerleader, cheering people on. Or do you prefer to sit alone at the computer and write test automation scripts or do exploratory testing? If you can’t do it in your own company, meetups and the community can help you try it out.
The management career path is not a one-way street
The path to management can be reversed, and this is something that is often underestimated. You can always say that the time was interesting, but the role doesn’t suit you.
Afterwards, there are several paths open to you: back to your old position or to another company where you can work as a tester or developer again. Andrea once experienced how a team lead deliberately went back into development and was very happy with it. This impressed her because it shows that there is always an exit strategy.
Don’t hold on to a position just because it looks like status. When you’re on the hamster wheel, it looks like a career ladder. It’s worth asking yourself again and again what actually makes you happy instead of frantically sticking to a decision once you’ve made it.
