Today, I like to write about stuff around work place and somewhat related to testing.
We love testing! Don't you love doing testing all day long? I do. I really do. Well, but since it is a job, we all have crappy days and good days. Have you experience these? Developers resolve a bug by-design even if you mentioned all the details of the issue? Someone keeps bouncing bug back to you even if that's not your issue? Someone blames you on something via email and cc his manager, your manager, and some other important people? You made a huge mistake, but your mistake gone away due to other big issue? You are just totally lost and simply take all the blame? Find a huge bug by accident? You've been keeping test automation or test case really well, but just one time when your manager sees your work, everything went wrong? Troubleshoot issue in a few second and find the root cause? Someone you believe not a very good developer/PM, but they save you from disaster? Give or take some condescending comments? You will be so happy if that guy does not work here. You'll be so happy if we don't need to do this? You get so angry about peer performance review?
I think we're so human being. Don't you think? It's not only you. It's everybody.. Right?
Here are things I think you might consider when you're dealing with people and emotion.
Do not criticize anyone publicly
Nobody likes criticism. Even if you're 100% absolutely right, do not criticize anyone in public. The other person will never appreciate your criticism. He will become very defensive. He'll try to find justification for himself and other to believe. And one day he will criticize you in public in return. I had several incidents around this. I had someone criticized me and cc'ed my manager or group alias. Oh man. It was hard to take. I came up with 100 reasons why that happens to justify the issue to myself. But I also have criticized some people with email. I thought I was cool. I email back with my awesome criticism to senior engineer's original email and yes REPLY ALL. I thought I had confidence in myself and opinions about things.. Like philosophy in testing. As a result, I've got very bad review that year. I can sense people did not like me when I raise my voice to debate. I'm not saying you need to be nice to other people to get good review. I'm saying you being confident/strongly opinionated person and you criticizing other people publicly are different thing. You can be confident and have strong opinion about everything without hurting others' feeling. When you receive dumbest email or unreasonable claim or blame from others, think how you can point out the issue without hurting others' feeling.
Leave your ego under your desk when you argue over a bug
I still get surprised by how people interpret and react to bugs. Some fight over the priority. Some doubt about severity of the bug. I've fought over bugs many many times. I have used "user perspective" cards or "terrible potential risk" cards to convince people. And yeah... I argued sometimes just for my EGO. I respectfully(?) respond to "You tester, stop breaking things!" with "I don't break things. I find things YOU broke!" But I think bugs are not our baby. It's a statement that indicate the issue which may or may not be serious impact to product/customers. It can definitely be interpreted differently to different people. Finding a bug will be our job, but how to react to the bug will be project team's responsibilities. Project management/business perspective has to be understood and development impact or effort should be understood as well. When I talk about the bug, I always try to remember what James Bach said in his talk. "Hey developer, don't think bugs as your mistake. We, testers, do not fight for bug to criticize your work. We want you to shine. It's like mother saying 'you have mustard on your mouth' when you leave the house for a date. We care about you. We want you to wipe out mustard on your mouth and shine." If you leave your ego under the desk, discuss facts around the issue and try to understand other people's perspective, it gets much smoother and easy.
Think big. Think big.
When I was a junior SDET, I was really scared of making mistakes. I get offended by people keep pointing out my mistake. I made some automation framework changes to make it much more effective. Overall, it was great change, but it was not perfect. There is always someone point out flaws and criticize my work. I was a bit discourage to try new initiatives or change. Sometimes I got to the point "why bother." But as I gain more experience, I started to ignore those criticism. I've done many more presentations even if there are always people find flaws in my idea. I've brought so many new successful initiatives at my work even if there are people in doubts. Dr. Russell Ackoff, who is my favorite modern theorist in Systems thinking, mentioned about errors of commission and errors of omission. Error of commission is a mistake that consists of doing something wrong. Error of omission is a mistake that consists of not doing something you should have done. At work, errors of commission are visible, but errors of omission are not visible at all. But I think we should more concern about errors of omission. We should think big. Do not worry too much about small mistake you make when you doing great work. And don't worry about people's doubt on your idea if you believe it would work. We are living in this advanced and modern world, not because of people who are in doubt, but because of people who challenged status quo.
