This is the third part on my series highlighting lessons I’m taking out of reading Agile Testing by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory. Other entries in the series can be found here.
Chapter 4 is largely about transitioning non-agile processes to an agile workflow. There’s a lot here that would have been useful to me a couple years ago, but these days my work is great about not imposing cumbersome processes. Nonetheless, there was one passage that stood out:
On Courage
Courage is especially important. Get up and go talk to people; ask how you can help. Reach out to team members and other teams with direct communication. Notice impediments and ask the team to help remove them.
— Agile Testing, Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory, Chapter 4
Often I find this one of my biggest personal challenges. Good communication is one of the most important elements of working as a team, and that means talking to people directly. I consider myself an introvert, and though I’m happy stepping up to lead a conversation when needed, it can be very easy to find excuses to avoid it. Sometimes I don’t want to bother someone or intrude, sometimes I’d rather avoid hashing out a point of disagreement.
There’s two main ways I try to overcome this.
Don’t borrow the jack
Some time ago, my husband told me a story about a man that got a flat tire out on a country road. According to Oprah.com the story originated with Danny Thomas in the 1950s. Quite a few versions have been nearly copy-pasted around the blogosphere already. The story goes that the man needed a borrow a jack to put his spare tire on. As he walked up to the closest farmhouse, he started imaging increasingly bad scenarios about what might happen. The farmer will probably demand money, get upset at being interrupted at the late hour, or just generally be an asshole. By the time the man gets to the front door, he’s worked himself up so much that he knows to expect the worst. When the farmer answers the knock, the man just shouts “You can keep your damn jack!” and storms off.
The moral of the story is to be careful about imagining worst-case scenarios and getting angry about hypotheticals. It’s this kind of thinking that leads to avoiding communication out of wanting to avoid conflict, even if the conflict is imaginary. Give the guy a chance. and embrace the benefit of the doubt.
“Don’t borrow the jack” has become a shorthand now between my husband and I to warn ourselves about imagining the worst. I try to remind myself of that when I start getting into the mindset that I’d rather avoid talking to someone directly. Overcoming that mindset when it does set in can take a lot of courage.
Like going to the gym
Summoning the courage to get up and talk to someone isn’t always about overcoming conflict avoidance. Lisa and Janet point out an example in Chapter 5 of where processes in place can make it even more difficult:
Defect tracking systems certainly don’t promote communication between programmers and testers. They can make it easy to avoid talking directly to each other.
— Agile Testing, Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory, Chapter 5
Too true. Written communication like defect trackers, documentation systems, and code review platforms have their purpose, but they’re also the easiest excuse to avoid conversation. A comment that provides background, context, or a clarification is great. One that continues a back-and-forth debate isn’t; go talk to the person and then come back to comment so there’s a record of the outcome. Five minutes talking in person could easily resolve something that would take hours or days in a writing. It can just as easily highlight a bigger issue at play that needs to be worked out.
The point is, as much as I might want to avoid it at times, I almost always come out of a face-to-face conversation happier for having done it. It’s like going to the gym. I may not want to, but just getting up and going for an hour is easier than agonizing over it all day, and is always worth it in the end.
Agile testing does, I think, ask more of us introverts than a documentation-heavy waterfall style. It can take courage to get up and talk to someone. Just don’t borrow the jack, and it’ll be worth it.