A day in the life of a Quality Manager
One of our core values is Excellence. We strive for excellence! We go the extra miles, because we want to be our clients' nr.1 choice. This means always aiming to provide quality, under any circumstances.
When the company grows, projects become more complex, there is a need for an important team called Quality Management. People who are obsessed with details, have excellent analytical and problem-solving abilities.
In today’s blog post, Mateusz, Vendor and Quality Management Team Leader, will walk us through what it’s like working in QM at Travod.
So, there are two biggest misconceptions about Quality Management:
The first is that we are police officers who are sniffing around, looking for errors, and that our main purpose is to mercilessly point those errors out.
The second is that Quality Management is responsible only for the quality of the translation that we, as a company, deliver. Meanwhile, we need to develop a holistic overview of the whole translation process, from the moment when a project is placed all the way to a sign-off from a satisfied client. To do this, we need to understand the work of all parties involved in the project lifecycle, namely the PMs, the DTP specialists, and our linguists. We stay in constant contact with Team Leads from other teams and together with them work on improvements that will ensure the quality of our services. This makes the role of a Quality Manager probably the most cross-functional from all the teams.
A busy day in QM looks like this:
Morning
As a Quality Manager, I care about the quality of my morning, so a cup of tea and good music is a must right before I start.
I'm looking into recently submitted quality issues and following up on them with detailed questions.
Noon
Time of the highest brain activity is the right time for a good investigation. To find a proper root cause and to propose the right preventive actions, I often read every detail of the project, supporting documentation, delivered files, communication between Sales Managers, Project Managers, DTP and linguists. Then I can connect the dots and draft ideas for improvements.
Afternoons are a good time to meet with Team Leads, give them overview of recent findings and brainstorm with them on things we can improve to avoid similar issues in the future.
When hustle slows down, it is a good time for reviewing our current Quality Management processes and drafting new ones as still there is a lot to be done.
The most satisfying part of the day is when people share their input to RCA: seeing how everyone cares about their job and the effort they take to really make a positive change.
