Adam Matlacz

Demant Tech Centre

When working with medical products, the verification process can be a real pain – especially when dealing with completely new QA team, complex hardware/software setup and collaboration of multiple scattered teams.

My first release as a System Test Manager was a real struggle – stress, overtime, exceeding deadlines and a lot of uncertainty. But I’ve learned my lesson and focused on preparing and building the team with the right skill set and competencies. Now each team member is a leader in his own field, with set of responsibilities and me acting as a glue to hold them all together. Motivation, focus on details of the tasks and team velocity have increased tremendously. Work is less stressful and management more happy with the results. Thanks to the changes, we are finally working well.

I want to tell the story of fall and rise of a team in complex project and environment. I will show my framework for building teams in complex projects and organizations. The talk will tackle the issue of building a Rock Star QA team by the right distribution of leadership.

Key Takeaways:

• You don’t need to have a formal position to make great changes in the way your team works (sometimes it’s even easier if you don’t have formal power).
• Transparency an learning on mistakes is the key for building great teams.
• Monolith leadership is inefficient and doesn’t scale to complex setups.

See more skills resources on EuroSTAR Huddle