This greatly depends on your personality and on three principal ideas.
1. your interests
2. your values
3. your abilities
Wherever you choose to go it must be in-line with the three things above or else you will not remain in that career. If you are not interested in the career you will get bored and leave. If it is not in-line with your values (ethically, morally, and financially) you will not be happy even if you find it interesting and you have the ability. If you lack the ability you will not be successful and will eventually be replaced either of your own will or not.
That said; I would say that I found just such a transition by going to a small consulting company to work on a long term test automation framework project. I used to work at Expedia, and there was no path for a test lead to venture into sales and business development within that organization. However, working on the private label test team I often sat in meetings with our biz-dev folks or on conference calls with our partners. I found at those meetings, that I was very interested in what our sales people did, selling technology solutions to companies who understood their business but did not understand which technological choices would help them advance their business. I know that sometimes "sales" has a stigma of being slimy or all talk and no action, but I felt that if I never promised anything that I couldn’t deliver, than I could operate in sales and not violate my values. I can sell something I believe in. I'm very passionate about test automation and talking about it naturally makes people (who have a problem that could be solved by automation) want to buy or hire or obtain the solution and approach I describe. So I have the ability (I think), and the interest, and can use my own integrity to operate within my values (provided I could find a company that would pay me what I think I'm worth).
I joined a small company (Mantis Technology Group) for a test automation project and while managing a team, and building an automation framework, I was able to be involved in meetings directly with the partner or client, along-side our business development manager and our CEO. I could learn from these great mentors while honing my skills in sales and while completing a project that fell within my area of expertise. In three years I grew my team from 3 to 13 and the company grew from 20 to over 100. Many of the sales were a direct result of my influence on the projects or my discussions with the customers.
My title is Director of QA and Support, but my roles are:
test manager
support manager
mentor
automation architect
sales and business development (test and dev related)
visionary
leader
interview question architect (building a team needs a plan just like building software)
I would say a technical sales position is a lot of fun and an easy transition if you already have the domain knowledge and you have an extroverted personality or like pleasing other people.
The above is my story, however, I’ve also seen successful transitions by others to Program manager, or to developer and then development lead and then development manager. I’ve also seen test managers rise to CTO if they are very into new technology and evaluating technologies and methodologies and are natural leaders.
Thanks, Ken Mizell
Director QA/Testing - Mantis
Ken.Mizell@mantis-tgi.com
c. 206.852.0249
w. 425.250.0421
f. 425-250-0401
"Whether you think you can or you think you cannot, you are right!" - Henry Ford
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