A Day in the Life of a TestLion: Oksana Lang, Engagement Manager

Carina Kärt Mattikas , Employer Brand Manager based in Tallinn, Estonia.

November 29th, 2021

Here at Testlio, we are truly proud of our Pride. In this series, we check in with TestLions from different teams and positions to learn more about what they do every day to power networked testing.  This time, our headliner is Oksana Lang, an Engagement Manager in Tallinn, Estonia.

Update: after many successful years as an Engagement Manager, Oksana got promoted and is now continuing her remarkable career as a Quality Assurance Strategist position.

Starting the day with a roar

I usually start my workday around 9:00 a.m., after dropping my kids at kindergarten and having breakfast.

The first thing I do every morning is go through Slack threads and emails over a cup of coffee. Information from those allows me to re-prioritize my daily plan, and ensure that essential tasks get onto my agenda for the day. Our distributed design model means that we have teams working around the globe and around the clock. This ritual repeats; ideas on what I’ll do tomorrow will be influenced by what happened during the US and APAC business days. 

Another important checkpoint is reviewing new client requests and checking progress on previous requests. When a question or request comes in, I have to decide on how to handle it, rally my team, provide critical client information and get the ball rolling. 

Hunting down the challenges

Every Engagement Manager owns multiple client accounts. Today, for example, I was working on around eight of them. 

We are in the Quarterly Business Review (QBR) season right now. Every account needs its QBR scheduled and completed within October or November. I worked on five of them today and output two QBR notes files with call minutes, action items, and owners. I started working on three pre-meeting packets and agendas for additional QBRs. 

Two of these are with new clients; so the testing Managers and I need to do in-depth work to analyze KPIs and successes, find explanations for data changes and think about challenges and recommendations. After I complete the first draft, I’ll work with the testing managers to fill gaps in information and further refine these, and then work with an account director to finalize them.

Beyond QBR, we also have our more regular client touchpoints. For example, we met with a health industry client for their bi-weekly retro meeting with their testing manager. We discussed how the last regression test runs went during the call and agreed on action items to improve processes. 

In addition to regular and routine activities, like the ones above, I worked on onboarding two new clients to Testlio, including one that will require fast, daily runs. Today, I spent an hour helping that team with mapping the testers’ statuses, pinging the Network team to check on tester recruitment, following up on client questions, and providing estimates of the service hours we are expected to utilize before the end of the week. 

Connecting with the Pride

Within my team of Engagement Managers, we do stand-ups twice a week.

Within Testlio, I like Donut calls. They allow me to meet people with whom I don’t typically work. Every donut conversation I have had has left me with the enjoyable feeling of getting to know another lovely human and TestLion. 

During October we did the steps challenge which I also liked. It motivated me to move more and ‘do my steps.’ I was worried that it would become competitive, but in the end, it was only competing with myself — can I do more steps today?

Winding down & finding balance

Many meetings happen at the end of the day, with teams and clients from the US. So, the end of the day is usually productive and full of interaction.

Once a week, I play ukulele in a local ensemble. Casual evenings are spent with my kids — going for a playground round, playing indoors, just enjoying each other. During summer, we like growing flowers and veggies together. During winter, we entertain ourselves with movie nights and board games. Being a mother to a four- and a six-year-old doesn’t leave me much time, but during my personal time in the evening, I like to read, work on crafts, or watch a series.