Donald O’Connell
Business Name : Shasta QA
Website URL: http://www.shastaqa.com
E-mail: don@shastaqa.com
Year Founded: 2002
Number of Employees : 60
What does your company do? ‘OurSourcing’ Software Testing and Quality Assurance Methodologies services. OurSourcing is a rural American competitor to overseas outsourcing, leveraging common business norms, proven methodologies, experience, location, and culture to be the cost-effective and strategic business solution for software testing and quality assurance solutions in the United States.
Was there a specific turning point when you realized your business was moving to the next level? Somewhere around year five or six, when we were fully booked for the coming year and full attention was toward active clients.
What processes or procedures have you implemented that have helped grow your company? Internal training and staff development based on our SOP’s. Cross team peer reviews. QA Lead and QA Management team meetings designed to challenge and learn. We need to develop our staff beyond the experience of specific projects and focus on learning for company wide efforts and outside resources. This includes ongoing management training.
What is most rewarding about running your business? We pride ourselves in creating rural American jobs while competing on a global stage.
What challenges have you faced and how have you overcome them? Time, patience and endurance for the early years. Company scaling and individuals scaling do not always run at the same pace– staying open and true to that then adjusting when appropriate.
If you were starting over today, what would you do differently? Invest more and earlier on senior staff. Invest more on leverageable solutions/efforts and less on pockets of growth and training– solutions for the day need to become culture of tomorrow. Material from one-on-ones and specific challenges should feed overall training material company wide. A culture of growth and challenges needs process to cultivate.
What advice do you have for other business owners? Realize that decisions can feel and be treating like moments or points in time but they should be considered on-going journeys more like a mountain hike or selecting a fork in the road. Decisions are starting points of effort and journeys, not final destinations. Just like a hike, you need to reevaluate your position on a map with regular compass readings and regular priority/destination challenges. Risk assessment and challenging direction is ongoing. Feeling like a decision is made or something has been solved can be premature or short sided. Often, decisions are ongoing efforts.
Please list any favorite books, tools or resources (software, website, etc.) you would recommend for others: Peer communications and mentors that allow learning from others– be open to it and invest your time.
I have especially valued The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership,Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, and Peopleware.
What is something that people might be surprised to learn about you? I was raised by older parents representing more of a double-generation gap. They were both raised in New York city during the depression and are products of the 1940’s era/culture. Competing on a global competitive scale to create American rural jobs is very satisfying.
