Val Lord on Being the First QA Hire on Mavenlink’s Product Team

As Quality Assurance Manager, Val Lord is constantly thinking about how to make life easier for the people who use Mavenlink every day. For this story, she explains what drew her to the company (and to QA), her tricks for finding bugs, and what’s different about teamwork at Mavenlink.

Tell us about your role at Mavenlink.

I manage quality assurance — I was actually the first QA hire on Mavenlink’s Product team. My job is to monitor and test new features to make sure they’re functional, consistently designed, and provide an ideal user experience. It’s a lot more than click-through testing, though; I’m collaborating with our Product, Design and Engineering teams on a daily basis. Mavenlink sees QA as integral to each step before launch.

What did you do before joining Mavenlink, and what drew you here?

I worked as an office manager in people operations for a small design firm. I’d hit a point where I wasn’t learning anything new, and I never want to be in that position. I’d also recently relocated to San Francisco, which is the center of the tech industry, so I took the leap and shifted to tech. It seemed limitless — you can accomplish so much with software, and yet there’s always more to learn.

I went through a UX boot camp, then I did some contract work in the field before I interviewed with Mavenlink. I believed in the product in part because at previous jobs, I’d wondered why something like Mavenlink wasn’t available; we didn’t have a good tool to manage complex projects. I also got to meet with the leadership, and it was clear they were invested in all aspects of the company, including QA. I was particularly thrilled to join in the QA capacity, because it was also clear to me that Mavenlink values great user experience above all else. The team here does a great job of what I call “empathetic product development,” meaning we put ourselves in the users’ shoes and think about them first.

“I was particularly thrilled to join in the QA capacity, because it was also clear to me that Mavenlink values great user experience above all else.”

What’s the most exciting thing about your work at Mavenlink?

The collaboration! Good QA demands a deep knowledge of the entire product, and I get to work with several different teams every day. If I have a code-related question, I can pull an engineer aside, or work with Maggie, our VP of Product, to get her perspective. Pairing is a key part of Mavenlink culture; everyone has their own perspective about how a user might behave, so we work together to check those assumptions. And everyone is so open to questions. I’m an introvert, but I keep one ear open when I take heads-down quiet time, just in case someone needs help.

Right now, I’m excited about one collaborative project in particular: I’ve been working with our programmers to automate some of our test processes and QA tasks. It’s an opportunity to improve our everyday practices, but it also lets me deepen my technical knowledge.

Tell us a bit more about your focus on user experience.

I consider myself an advocate for our end users, and I have the opportunity at Mavenlink to represent them throughout the process, not just as a final step. I might talk with an engineer about the challenges presented by a change, or work with a designer to make a navigational tool more intuitive.

Throughout those discussions, we’re all thinking in terms of cause and effect. Mavenlink is a complex product, and something that might seem like a minor change could upend a major feature. So I’m focused on making sure we catch bugs in a new feature before we get to the release date, because those kinds of hiccups directly affect our users. Of course, some mistakes are inevitable, but we try to be so deliberate that they’re rare.

“Mavenlink is a robust product, and we have to think holistically about every step a user might take.”

How do you go about catching potential problems?

Every mistake is an opportunity to learn; I keep checklists, and they are constantly developing. Even with the experience I’ve gained and all the checks I’ve memorized, something could pop up today that I just haven’t encountered before, or didn’t notice yesterday. For example, I remember one point early on when we did an upgrade that I scoured. I thought I’d checked every nitty-gritty detail. But I didn’t check emojis, and they broke. Now I’ll never not check emojis!

Things like that are a good reminder of why we shouldn’t make assumptions or completely standardize our process. Checklists are useful but they’re not the whole picture. Mavenlink is a robust product, and we have to think holistically about every step a user might take.

Can you tell us more about the challenges you face in your role?

In general, our challenges arise from our rapid growth. As we hire more people, especially within QA, we’re working to figure out how best to divide and conquer our responsibilities. For instance, it might be better for one QA person to work closely with Engineering and another with Design. Right now, I’ve got my hands in nearly everything, but we’re watching for opportunities to adjust and remain efficient as we scale.

Another example: when we we first brought on enterprise clients, our testing environment wasn’t really suited for such large amounts of data — but we didn’t want the clients to be the guinea pigs as we learned to make the necessary adjustments. So I built out a new environment using sample data. We tested things there, and were able to hit the ground running with the larger clients based on what we learned.

“I really enjoy how much it feels like one team here, without the division between QA and Engineering that you see in a lot of places.”

How is Mavenlink different from other places you’ve worked?

I really enjoy how much it feels like one team here, without the division between QA and Engineering that you see in a lot of places. Here it’s not just, “Hey, we finished the code, now you check it.” I’d never make a change in the code myself, but I have started to understand how to anticipate certain problems within the code. The way we collaborate gives me a chance to learn the more technical aspects of our work.

Some of the enterprise companies I worked for previously had long life cycles for building new features, with strict timelines for product development, programming, and QA. That meant engineers could say “No changes after October. We’ll have moved on to another project.” That might lead to QA being less flexible and agile when problems arise, which is not ideal. I definitely prefer the way we do it here, where QA is involved early and often.

In terms of culture, the support Mavenlink provides within the company and in the community is unlike anything I’ve experienced. We’re ramping up our mentorship program, and we support organizations like Women Who Code and Techtonica, both of which foster engineering and programming education for girls who otherwise might not have access to this world. It’s wonderful to be a part of that.

Interested in joining the team?

Check out Mavenlink’s open roles on the product team in S.F. and Salt Lake City.