Managing: Venetta Bridges directs system QA for Cox Communications

Many moves, all of them upward, have led this quality engineering specialist and change agent to a vital job in the exciting cable industry

The best quality assurance work is done by someone who�s not afraid to be a �change agent,� says Venetta Bridges. She�s director of system quality assurance for digital cable provider Cox Communications (Atlanta, GA).

Bridges has been in QA, both on the hardware and the software side, during most of her twenty-three year career. Today she manages eighteen associates at Cox. Overseeing this quality team is a huge enjoyment, she says.

�I�m very service-oriented and I enjoy motivating the team, stretching them to do things they didn�t realize they could, and being there to support them,� Bridges says.

She�s had the QA director job for a little more than a year. It involves making sure products and services are performing as expected, with duties including domain management, software testing, process standardization, monitoring and improvement. The analysts on her team design test cases and verify them against system and business requirements.

Testing features and function
�We�re actually testing out new features and functionality as we get the requirements from our internal customers in new product development and marketing. We make sure that what is coded meets those requirements and doesn�t break existing code,� Bridges explains.

For example, the company may want a website tool to help customers order phone services. The QA team verifies that what has been developed meets customer expectations in functionality and performance. The analysts handle several projects at a time, including Web-based apps, telephony, and technical improvements to make their own work more efficient.

Demonstrating success
On a daily basis, Bridges juggles customers, process, tools, technology and budget. �I can often delegate meetings to team members while I work on the process improvement initiatives, writing guidelines and policies,� she says.

As a manager, Bridges says, she�s very action- and outcome-oriented. �I try to demonstrate success, not just talk about it! It�s important to crystallize the team�s mission, because the group occupies a unique niche within the company, doing both software testing and quality initiatives.

�We�re the final gate before a product or service is released into production, and we�re the ones who have to sometimes say that a project is not ready for production yet,� Bridges explains. �Other departments may see us as a bottleneck, yet without us here there could be some real problems and the customer could have a not-so-pleasant experience.�

Beginning in petroleum
Although Bridges has been in quality engineering for most of her career, she began in petroleum engineering.

She grew up in St. Louis, MO. Her dad was a college dean turned financial planner and her mother a special ed teacher. Bridges� sister is very analytical and her brother is also mechanically inclined, she notes.

In college, �Engineering was Plan B,� she says. But she did end up there and in 1985 got her BS in engineering management with an emphasis in petroleum engineering from the University of Missouri at Rolla. She interned with Amoco, but when she started her senior-year job hunt petroleum industry jobs were scarce. So, using the engineering management part of her degree, she started with McDonnell Douglas (St. Louis, MO) as an engineering planner in budgeting and financials.

Quality engineering
Quality engineering had been an interest for Bridges ever since she did some courses as an undergrad. A few months after she started at McDonnell Douglas, Martin Marietta recruited her for a quality job. �It was a great opportunity, so I moved to Orlando, FL to work for them in quality engineering.� She spent three years in the QA management rotation program.

She also went to night school, and received an MSIE from the University of Central Florida in 1989. Then she moved to Scientific Atlanta (Norcross, GA), to work for a year as a material analyst and quality engineer.

Into communications
From 1990 to 1994 she was a QA supervisor and engineer for Digital Communications Associates Inc (DCA, Alpharetta, GA).

�I was on the components side doing process work, and I really enjoyed that,� she says. �DCA had a variety of processes that I could get my arms around, so it was a good fit.�

A stint at Sprint
After that she joined Sprint (Atlanta, GA) as an internal consultant in business process improvement. �It was neat, all about identifying ways to make business processes more efficient. Because it was an internal consultant group, I got a chance to explore consulting without traveling all over the country,� Bridges says.

After a year Sprint promoted her to manager of ops support. She worked on performance metric reporting, and with the network operating centers, ensuring their responsiveness during outages.

Performance metrics
A former manager at Sprint recruited her to work at MCI Worldcom (Atlanta, GA). She was manager of process development and analysis from 1997 to 1999.

At the time, long-distance companies were being broken up under the Telecom Act of 1996. Bridges became a �corporate witness,� examining performance metrics standards and determining if there was fair competition. She argued on behalf of MCI before the Public Service Commission, the FCC and the Department of Justice.

But it was all too much travel! �I had two children at home under the age of two. After traveling to three states in one week, I said, �I need a little balance here,�� Bridges recalls. So she moved to Bell South Telecommunications (Atlanta, GA), where she was still overseeing performance metrics but with less travel involved.

�We developed statistical methodology to measure parity of service and performance with competitors. It was neat to work with people who were at the top of the field in statistics,� Bridges says.

Software quality VP at TWC
In 2000 she took a job with the Weather Channel (Atlanta, GA). Now she had the single focus of software quality.

�I went there as a manager and in short order was asked to lead the data management group. Eventually I was VP of IT operations,� she says.

On to ADP
From 2005 to 2006 Bridges worked for Automatic Data Processing Inc (Atlanta, GA) as VP of ops for COBRA and FSA admin. That was a little out of her area, she admits, but gave her some new and useful experience.

�What drew me to the role was that this particular business unit was like running my own company. It exposed me to the inner workings of running a business that I otherwise wouldn�t have had,� she says. For example, she learned to manage offshore teams, one in India.

The work was exhilarating, but left her very little time with her family. Her daughters were growing up and she wanted to be with them. The logical move was to Cox.

Balance at last
Bridges� QA job at Cox Communications gives her the balance she craves. Cox has a reputation for being family-oriented, and she enjoys the work environment there.

�The cable industry is exciting, with new products, services and technology that are consumed by almost everyone,� she says. �With all the changes in technology, you get exposed to quite a bit.�

Now she�s a director instead of VP, but that�s fine with her. �I�ve never been into titles; what I value is the learning and balance.

�When I look at how my career has progressed, I have all this learning that no one can take away from me, and I can apply it in my current role,� Bridges concludes with satisfaction.