With this art­icle we begin a series of pub­lic­a­tions in which we reveal some secrets of what a career path in Codelab can look like. Let’s start with the depart­ment that is mis­takenly per­ceived as very calm. Noth­ing more mis­lead­ing, just take a look.

As Qual­ity Team mem­bers we are often asked what we actu­ally do and why we love our job.

We would like to take this oppor­tun­ity to present our perspective.

JOB TITLE
Qual­ity Part­ner / Qual­ity Specialist
DIVI­SION / DEPARTMENT
Qual­ity
WORK­ING HOURS
❌ Part time
✔️ Full time
ESSEN­TIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
Essen­tial Duties and Respons­ib­il­it­ies:
What we do:
- we provide expert sup­port in qual­ity related aspects
- we imple­ment qual­ity goals defined and approved by the man­age­ment board
- we imple­ment busi­ness rel­ev­ant norms / sys­tems / stand­ards
- we co-cre­ate pro­cesses, pro­ced­ures, and instruc­tions
- we sup­port the imple­ment­a­tion and main­ten­ance of Auto­mot­ive SPICE
- we are ref­er­ees help­ing in pro­cess’ and stand­ards’ com­pli­ance
- we help to devel­op an organ­iz­a­tion (based on inde­pend­ent / object­ive obser­va­tions)
- we help pro­ject teams under­stand qual­ity require­ments and work accord­ingly (e.g. Auto­mot­ive SPICE)
- we sup­port pro­jects in find­ing and using tech­niques or meth­ods needed to solve prob­lems
- we sup­port the imple­ment­a­tion of improve­ment and repair pro­grams
- we facil­it­ate work­shops
- we con­duct qual­ity-related train­ings
- we care about employ­ees’ aware­ness of qual­ity require­ments

What we don’t do:
- we are not Pro­cesses Police
- we do not ana­lyse source code
- we do not review source code or tech­nic­al work products
- we are not test­ers
- we are not a Bar Charts Gen­er­at­ing Team (or so we think 😊 )
- we do not cre­ate pro­cesses for pro­cesses sake only
- we are not pro­fes­sion­ally involved in drink­ing cof­fee 😊. This is not our core business.
EDU­CA­TION AND/OR WORK EXPER­I­ENCE REQUIREMENTS
Use­ful pro­fes­sion­al back­ground:
- tech­nic­al in the field of soft­ware devel­op­ment
- know­ledge about Pro­ject Man­age­ment meth­od­o­lo­gies, espe­cially — valu­able when sup­por­ted by own exper­i­ence
- Jack of all trades 😊
- psy­cho­lo­gist or maybe even preschool teach­er 😊

Use­ful com­pet­ence:
On pur­pose we don’t use the word “required”. The com­pet­ence needed for this role may be learned on the job. Some of the skills you will be acquain­ted with are, for example:
- norms and stand­ards like ISO 9001 (Qual­ity Man­age­ment), ISO 14001 (Envir­on­ment­al Man­age­ment), ISO 27001 (Inform­a­tion Safety), ISO 21434 (Cyber­se­cur­ity)
- Auto­mot­ive SPICE mod­el
- facil­it­a­tion skills
- audit­ing skills

Fur­ther devel­op­ment pro­spects:
Based on our and our former co-work­ers exper­i­ence we may assure you that gain­ing qual­ity exper­i­ence may equip you with com­pet­en­cies for pos­i­tions such as:
- Pro­ject Man­ager
- Scrum Mas­ter
- Team Man­ager
- Man­aging Dir­ect­or (yes, we know one or two with Qual­ity exper­i­ence 😊)
- Extern­al Busi­ness Con­sult­ant

There is a small chance that, like our Head of Qual­ity, you will get addicted to Qual­ity and become Qual­ity Part­ner for life (also known as Dead End 😊).
PHYS­IC­AL REQUIREMENTS
A great sense of humour
SKILLS AND ABILITIES
- to facil­it­ate work­shop ses­sions and meet­ings
- to influ­ence oth­ers without hav­ing the author­ity
- to resolve con­flicts
- to con­trol the crowd 😊
- to listen and hear
- to sep­ar­ate cri­ti­cism from improve­ment pro­pos­al
- not to take the mon­key (acc. to the wis­dom from “The One Minute Man­ager meets the Mon­key” book)
- to absorb count­less amounts of cof­fee (dur­ing meet­ings and workshops) 😊
ADDI­TION­AL INFORMATION
Qual­ity role advant­ages:
- You may play smart and say how oth­ers should work
- You may the­or­ize
- You may work out solu­tions in a group of experts
-You can always get to know a new norm or stand­ard
- You will have many oppor­tun­it­ies of train­ing and devel­op­ment dur­ing work­ing hours
- Major chal­lenge in this role:
- How to get the job done so that oth­ers think they came up with the idea 😊

Qual­ity role dis­ad­vant­ages:
there is none 😊
INSPIR­A­TION­AL QUOTE
Our role in the organ­iz­a­tion can be sum­mar­ized by para­phras­ing the words of Lao Tzu:

“A qual­ity spe­cial­ist / part­ner is best when people barely know he exists when his work is done, his aim ful­filled, they will say: we did it ourselves”
Ver­sionDateAuthorReviewed byApproved byChange his­tory
1.012.04.2021Anna Michel-Mak­uch, Ada Olszewska,
Krzysztof Musi­ał		Jan Teck­er SiegelJan ZaborowskiInspir­ing story about career in Qual­ity Team @ Codelab