How we’ve created an engaged, supportive and substantive QA team. Sweatcoin case. Part 1
Tags: management, qa, onboarding, remote
Published: 2023-11-16 16:52:46

When it comes to hiring people, every company wants to find a motivated and self-sufficient employee, and think that it's the responsibility of the person itself to be so. 

In fact this falls to the company as they have to create an environment where people will feel supported and valuable. If a company has poor processes, then even the most effective employees will be burned out and their motivation will fly away. 
That’s why we aim to find a talent, take their unique skills and grow it to the next level at Sweatcoin.

**But first things first. What is Sweatcoin?**

Sweatcoin is a free app which rewards your daily steps with a new-generation currency you can spend on cool products or donate to charity. A year ago we launched our second own crypto currency $SWEAT and Sweat Wallet application for staking, trading etc. $SWEAT is a real crypto asset that you mint with your movement.

And now, let’s dive into the heart of our QA team structure. The team is divided into 3 streams: the Sweatcoin stream, the Sweat Wallet stream and the Automation stream.


![QA Team Structure](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6afpcnoc3byfvfijravt.png)

Sweatcoin is spread across more than 30 countries, representing the “remote-first” idea of Sweatcoin. Taking this into consideration, effective communication and staying updated on the features of every team are the keys to our success. In this article, we'll walk you through the core activities that drive our team's collaboration, ensuring seamless communication and a strong support system for everyone). In this article, we'll take you on a journey through the core activities that power our team's collaboration, creating a tapestry of seamless communication and a robust support system for everyone.

**1.1. Onboarding for new employees**

Every person's path can differ in a new role, and sometimes can differ to their previous place of work. Getting all the information can be tough and overwhelming, especially in the first few weeks. 


We understand this and strive to make the onboarding process as smooth as possible. As part of this effort, we have created a Notion page where new employees can get their onboarding plan, which is spread out over a period of approximately two weeks. 

Apart from the main onboarding process, there are several additional items that a QA engineer must be familiar with. With the expansion of our QA team, the number of tasks and explanations has also increased. Therefore, it was decided to create a separate onboarding checklist for QA, which is divided into four main parts:

1. 
Environment setup

1. 
Understanding of how main features of our application works

1. 
Understanding of main processes within QA and product team works

1. 
Giving feedback to us

![Buddy helps to onboard a new QA](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/dhsyqmep0n38fw3blylp.png)

Let’s have a look into the details of each point.

To begin with, it is essential that you have all the access required to perform your job. We encourage our employees to be self-motivated, so they can obtain access to nearly all the necessary tools independently. They can do this by following **the Onboarding Checklist** and requesting access through a dedicated Slack channel. 

Furthermore, it is crucial that you gain an in-depth understanding of Sweatcoin's operations, both as an application and as a company. You should take the time to familiarize yourself with the environment and the processes that are in place.

And here's a thought to keep in mind: as a fresh addition to our team, every QA engineer might just be the keen-eyed observer who spots issues within the application or processes that others might have missed. We believe that with each new person who joins us always has valuable updates and improvements after onboarding.

Feedback about the Onboarding Checklist itself is also very important - when you update it several times you could think about that as a perfect document, but there is always room for improvement. The Onboarding Checklist has useful information about what meetings the QA Engineer participates in, who is in the team, who could help you in which case etc.

Before a new employee starts their first day at Sweatcoin, we just copy the template of the needed stream (as each stream has specific things in each block of the Onboarding Checklist, especially Automation), rename it to include the name of the person and now it’s their personal onboarding plan. 
It’s really easy to keep track of onboarding progress having that. 

For successful onboarding we need to mention 2 key elements: **Success Memo** document and a **buddy**.

What is Success Memo?
It’s a document that lists everything, what newbies should achieve and which skills they should have to successfully end the probation period. 

It’s divided into 3 main parts: hard skills, soft skills and mindset. 
This really helps the person to understand what the company expects from their work and helps the company to have much less difference between expectation and reality of how the person does their job.

In order to help to achieve their goals each new employee has a buddy assigned to them for that probation period. Buddy helps a new joiner navigate the ins and outs of the product team's functionality and provides answers to the inevitable flood of questions they might have.

From day one, we emphasize that it's not just okay to have questions during your probation period; it's encouraged. We believe it's better to ask those questions now than to wait half a year. 

_Part 2: Daily routine is coming soon._