How I manage our product junior

A role page that says what's hers to decide, and a weekly 1:1 she fills in first.

Type: Internal · my team
Rhythm: Weekly 1:1, 30 minutes
Her work: Testing, help videos, cost control
Lives in: Notion, Linear

Problem

When our product junior joined, I didn't want to just hand her tickets. She'd never know what was actually hers to decide, and she'd keep coming back to ask what to do next.

Goal

Finding bugs is only half of it. I want her to come with what she thinks could be better, and I explain the tradeoffs, so she starts thinking about the product and not just testing it.

Solution

A one-page role page that says what she does and what's hers to decide, and a weekly 1:1 page she fills in first, with room for her own ideas on what to improve.

Role page

DoesTesting · help videos · cost control

How to test

Prototype Does it work? Try to break it.
New feature Can a user do the job, start to finish?
Release Did anything that worked stop working?

Every bug report answers five things

Did What she did
Expected What should have happened
Got What actually happened
Where Which account and screen
How bad Her call on how serious it is

Yours to decideWhether it reproduces, how bad it is, pass or fail on a retest, and how each help video is made.

PlanningEvery task on the calendar, named after the actual task.

Weekly 1:1 · 30 minutes

Your pointsShe adds them before we meet. Each one says what she tried, what happened, and her question.

What she'd improveHer ideas for making things better. I walk her through the tradeoffs of each one.

In the meetingWe go through them and agree what happens to each.

Next actionsHersMine

Fig. 1 — The two pages we work from: her role page and our weekly 1:1.

What I learned

When she gets stuck, that's useful too. If something confuses her even with a test guide in front of her, it will confuse our customers. So her questions aren't just her needing help, they're some of the best product feedback I get.