CommunicationSkillsForTesters

It's Friday the 13th, and my thoughts have taken a few strange turns of late. I have an idea for a performance piece, and was hoping to find further inspiration here.

People in the role of Tester interact a lot with people in the other roles on projects.

Please share your stories of testers who interacted well with you, testers who did not interact well with you, times when you were a tester and interacted well with others, or times when you were a tester and did not interact well with others.

Thanks

--DaveLiebreich 2004.02.13

Dave, what is unique about testers? As far as I can tell, everyone needs to interact well with everyone else on a project. -- JohannaRothman 2004.02.13

Yep. They all do. I'd like to hear stories about testers because that is the role I am most familiar with. --DaveLiebreich 2004.02.13

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In response to Johanna's question, testers must speak tech to developers and each other and business to users. Testers must communicate people's mistakes tactfully (in requirememnts or code), so that everyone is glad they found the mistake. As a director, I've got half a dozen projects, each with multiple development and user groups, that cover the range of "maturity" in their approach to software development. I've got uptight traders as users and easy going researchers as developers as well as IS-type developes following "best practices". I've got technical management that wants more technical test efforts and business uses management that only wants testing of realistic business scenarios. But my biggest interaction challenge is because I run a service (as opposed to deloivering a product) I am a support group. I must encourage (influence) my customers to be the champions of my group as strong as they are for their own groups -- promotions, headcount, etc. Boy have I got stories... DaveRabinek 02.13.2004

So please share some of those stories --DaveLiebreich 2004.02.13

In my early days as a programmer, there were no testers. I was my own tester. I had plenty of dysfunctional communications with myself. That's why I took up learning about congruence and centering. It changed my life. I recommend it to every tester I meet: getting into clear communication with yourself before you try anybody else. - JerryWeinberg 2004.02.14

Updated: Sunday, February 15, 2004