Valuable Skills to Make you the Best Quality Manager?


Every project requires a dedicated manager that handles all operations—from taking care of the quality to ensuring seamless execution of the project. A quality manager, for instance, is supposed to take care of the project's quality. They also ensure that the quality is maintained throughout the project and the final product satisfies the end user.

They guide their teams in the right direction and follow the best management practices that bring the best output. Completing your lean sigma certification course is the first step in advancing your career in quality management. Let's first discuss the meaning of quality management, and later, we'll get to the skills a quality manager needs to streamline management operations.

What is Quality Management?

Quality management focuses on long-term organizational objectives. The primary purpose of a quality manager is to bring all stakeholders on board for project improvement. They ensure that every project that they work on meets the desired quality standards before they reach the target market.

It's not a simple process. Instead, quality management is a continuous process that's achieved with practice. The manager works with customers to identify their goals and set quality standards and quality control processes. Based on these, they check each product to ensure that the final product is aligned with the customer's objectives.

Also called quality assurance managers, these professionals thoroughly evaluate the internal management processes to identify the strengths and weaknesses and set up a plan to improve the quality control process. They work with the stakeholders and customers, collect regular feedback, and work on them regularly.

Skills of a Quality Manager

A professional and qualified manager keeps honing their skills to ensure that the organizational objectives are achieved, and the best quality standards are met for each project. Below we have listed the most crucial skills that every quality manager must possess and hone to deliver the best results.

Leadership

In most organizations, the manager serves as a leader that guides the team from start to finish. They give clear instructions to the team, helping them execute their routine tasks effectively and achieve the desired quality without wasting resources.

A quality manager doesn’t just check the quality of the end product, but they help teams achieve this quality through regular communication, effective collaboration, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills. These are the additional soft skills that a quality manager needs to become a trusted leader. Businesses look for a quality manager that is a confident leader and possesses all the soft skills expected from senior-level executives.

Planning and Organization

A project starts with an effective plan. It’s the manager’s duty to develop a project charter that presents a clear list of the resources needed to accomplish a project, the total time it will take, the budget, and the employees required in the team. This first stage of project management covers everything—from delegating tasks to implementing changes. This project charter is approved by the client or stakeholders before the quality manager, and the team can start work on the project.

Likewise, a quality manager possesses organizational skills. Using advanced project management tools, they assign duties to each employee based on their skills and track their progress at different stages. Once the plan is approved, the team executes it following the manager’s instructions. This also helps identify whether the team is on the right track.

Communication

The essence of a good leader is communication. How well they communicate the business’ vision to the team and stakeholders show how great of a leader they are. A quality assurance manager must be capable of explaining their ideas to the team in clear words so that there’s no room for confusion and conflicts between team members.

It’s equally important that the quality assurance manager communicates the progress of a project with stakeholders and clients. Keeping them informed throughout the project’s progress will help you implement a change if required during the production instead of having to re-work the entire project from scratch.

Problem-Solving

A good manager identifies all risks and problems that might crop up in the middle of the project before starting work on it. Ideally, you should identify the possible risks during the planning stage so that you can plan a risk mitigation strategy beforehand.

Not only does it give you enough time to think about the best ways to deal with the risks, but you get peace of mind knowing that you have a risk management plan in place. If anything goes wrong or is not in accordance ith your plan, you can make necessary changes to fix it quickly. As a quality assurance manager, you must know which problems need what solutions and what can help improve the quality of the product.

Technical Skills

In today’s AI-driven world, technical skills have become a mandatory part of project management. Hard skills are as important as soft skills and even more in IT-based industries. People prefer managers that are willing to execute the plans instead of just ordering around and watching employees do all the hard work.

While a project manager is required in all industries, businesses expect a quality manager to possess technical skills alongside communication, critical thinking, problem-solving, and so on. For example, if it’s an IT help desk company, you will be required to have the basic knowledge of ticket management, reporting & analytics, etc.

Collaboration

Some projects require cross-departmental collaboration, in which different members from different departments need to work together to complete the project. As a manager, you should facilitate a seamless team collaboration so that all teams within your organization understand their responsibilities and communicate with other teams to finish their tasks effectively.

Bottom Line

These are the most important skills a quality manager needs to advance their career in quality management. Remember, your soft skills are incredibly important. How you work with your teams, communicate the company’s vision with stakeholders, and monitor the project’s progress will determine the project's success. When executed well, these skills will help you become a trusted and qualified quality assurance manager. Good Luck!

Updated on: 08-Feb-2023

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