Releases wait for QA
Regression is slow, reruns are common, or test failures take too long to explain.
QA consulting for engineering leaders
Find what’s slowing your releases.
Get a clear view of your regression, QA ownership and release risks, with a practical plan for what to fix first.
Start with a free 25-minute conversation.
With Viacheslav Melnikov · Head of QA30+
QA engineers led across product teams
10h → 30m
Cross-team regression improvement
People + systems
Leadership, engineering and practical AI workflows
Selected results from previous employment, achieved with the teams involved.
When this helps
Your team is shipping. Quality is getting harder to manage.
Readiness is hard to see
You piece together the real status from Jira, chats and meetings before every release.
Too much depends on a few people
Ownership, knowledge and capacity become harder to coordinate as the team grows.
Start here
QA & Release Diagnostic
A focused review of one team or product and its release process. You work directly with me, from the first conversation to the final walkthrough.
Up to 3 weeksOne team or product
€1,500Introductory fixed-scope engagement
Discuss the diagnosticScope, start date, payment and applicable taxes are confirmed in a written proposal before work begins.
What you leave with
- A map of your current QA and release flow
- Up to five risks or bottlenecks, with supporting evidence
- Three priority changes with owners and first steps
- A 30-day plan with measures of progress
- A one-hour walkthrough with your team
A clear boundary
Up to four short interviews, a sample of 20 issues and five releases or regression runs, and a focused review of the relevant tests, reporting or CI setup.
Implementation and a full review of every repository are scoped separately. The delivery window starts when the agreed materials are available.
QA hiring support
Technical interviews for your next QA hire.
When you need an experienced interviewer or a clearer way to assess candidates, I help organize and conduct interviews matched to the role, level and product.
- QA engineers
- Test automation engineers
- QA leads
- QA managers / Heads of QA
Prepare the interview
Define the role, required competencies, interview stages and practical tasks. Agree consistent evaluation criteria before meeting candidates.
Conduct the assessment
Lead the technical or management interview, or join your interviewer. Assess testing skills, automation or leadership against the requirements of the role.
Equip your team
Build interview guides and scorecards, align interviewers and review how the hiring team evaluates evidence.
A written assessment after each interview
Relevant examples from the interview, strengths, gaps and points to verify at the next stage. Your team makes the final hiring decision.
You bring the candidates; I help prepare and carry out their assessment. We can scope a single interview, a series or support for the whole interview process.
Discuss QA hiring
Scope and price agreed before work begins, based on the role, preparation and number of interviews.
See the output
A report your team can use the next morning.
Findings connect an observation to a decision, an owner and a way to check progress. Open a short example of the report and action plan.
Read the sample diagnosticIllustrative example · fictional data
Regression is only part of the delay
A two-hour suite sits inside a release process with a much longer wait for triage and ownership.
First step: assign a triage owner and measure the wait between a failed run and a decision.
Relevant experience
Work behind the approach.
These examples come from my work as a QA leader. They are founder experience, not projects sold by QualityOps Studio.
Regression and automation
From 10 hours to 30 minutes
At Winfinity, I helped improve cross-team regression through automation, parallel execution, test data and CI/CD changes. The engineering team implemented the improvements within the QA function I led.
The lesson: inspect the execution model, the data and the ownership together.
Result from a previous role. The scope and outcome will be different for each team.
QA operations and AI
From scattered updates to useful decisions
I design scheduled workflows that bring QA reports and delivery data together, expose capacity and release risks, and prepare source-linked management summaries for human review.
The lesson: a useful report identifies a decision, its evidence and the person who can act.
The sample report on this site uses fictional data and contains no internal company information.
Your consultant
Viacheslav Melnikov
Head of QA · Based in Serbia · Working remotely
I lead a distributed QA organization of more than 30 engineers. My background spans test automation, telecom, financial systems, infrastructure and product delivery.
My work connects engineering details with team decisions: regression, dependencies, QA capacity, knowledge transfer and practical AI-assisted reporting. We agree where I advise, where I build, and what your team owns.
How we work
A focused review, then a clear decision.
- 01
Talk about the problem
A free 25-minute conversation to understand the situation and decide whether a diagnostic fits.
- 02
Agree the scope
A written proposal sets the question, sources, access, price, timing and deliverables.
- 03
Review the evidence
Interviews and selected delivery records show where time and confidence are lost.
- 04
Choose the next steps
We walk through the findings. Your team can use the plan independently or scope a focused implementation.
Before we start
Do you need production access?
Usually not. We can start with read-only exports and screen sharing. Any additional access is agreed for the specific scope.
Can you help implement the changes?
Yes. After the diagnostic, we can scope one improvement in regression, release reporting, dependencies or knowledge transfer. Engineering work and ongoing ownership are agreed with your team.
How do you use AI?
When appropriate, AI can help organize evidence and draft analysis. Use of tools and data is agreed with you; important conclusions are reviewed by a person and remain linked to their sources.
What if we only need an extra tester?
This engagement is designed for a quality or release-process problem. Test execution capacity and open-ended staffing are outside the diagnostic scope.
Let’s talk
What does your QA team need next?
Tell me about your product, team and the release or hiring challenge you want to solve. We can arrange a 25-minute introductory conversation.
Prefer your own email app? viacheslav.v.melnikov@gmail.com
No confidential documents needed for the first message.