I’ve seen it happen dozens of times. Someone gets excited about building a QA community at their organization. They create a Slack channel, schedule the first meetup, maybe even get budget for pizza.
Three months later, the channel is silent. The meetups stopped. Another dead community.
The Failure Pattern
Most internal communities fail for predictable reasons:
1. No Clear Purpose
“Let’s create a space for QA people to connect” sounds good but means nothing. Connect about what? To achieve what? Without a clear purpose, communities become social clubs—nice to have, but not essential. And not-essential gets deprioritized.
2. Champion Dependency
The community lives and dies with one enthusiastic person. When they get busy, go on vacation, or change jobs, everything stops. This isn’t sustainable—it’s a single point of failure.
3. Consumption Over Contribution
Members show up to take but not to give. They want answers to their questions but don’t answer others’. They attend talks but never present. Eventually, the few contributors burn out.
4. No Visible Value
Leadership doesn’t see the community producing anything tangible. In the next budget cut or reorg, it’s the first thing to go. “We don’t really need this, do we?”
Building Communities That Last
After several years of experimentation at OP Financial Group, I’ve found patterns that work:
Start with a Real Problem
Don’t build a community for community’s sake. Find a problem that multiple QA people share and can’t solve alone. “We keep solving the same test data problems in isolation” is a better starting point than “we should connect more.”
Distribute Leadership Early
The founder shouldn’t be the only leader. Within the first month, identify three to five people who can take ownership of specific aspects: events, content, onboarding, tools. When the founder steps back, the community continues.
Make Contribution Easy
Most people won’t give a 45-minute presentation. But they might share a five-minute tip. They might answer a quick question. They might review someone else’s test approach. Lower the bar for contribution, then celebrate every contribution publicly.
Document Everything
Every solution discussed. Every lesson learned. Every tool evaluated. Turn tacit knowledge into searchable artifacts. When the community produces visible, lasting value, it becomes indispensable.
Connect to Business Outcomes
Track what the community enables: faster onboarding, reduced duplicate work, problems solved that would have taken longer in isolation. When you can show ROI, the community becomes a strategic asset rather than a nice-to-have.
The Longer Game
Building a real QA community takes time. Expect the first year to be mostly foundation-building. By year two, you should see self-sustaining patterns. By year three, the community should be generating value that leadership actively protects.
It’s not fast work. But it’s the kind of work that compounds.
Struggling to build a QA community at your organization? I’ve been through this process multiple times and would be happy to share what I’ve learned. Let’s have a conversation.