- Image via Wikipedia
In the past week, there have been two blogposts one about testing and one not necessarily about testing. Both, in their own ways, dealt with a theme of caring.
The first is a post on the Thoughts from the Test Eye blog from Martin Jansson titled, Turning the Tide of Bad Testing. The centerpiece of Martin’s post is the Broken Window Theory which you can read about in his post. He ties it to testing with a thought provoking list of how broken windows manifest in software testing. To me, the list is a masterpiece. There are a couple of items on that list that stand out in terms of this post:
“How do we see Broken Window Theory affect testing?…
- When you have stopped caring about how you test.
- When you have stopped caring about how you cooperate with others.”
The second post is Alan Page’s post on Leadership and Caring. It’s one of his shorter posts and he wrote without the intent that it was about specifically about testing. He writes that, “Leaders care about making progress in their work and in sharing their results. More importantly, they care about the work and progress far more than they care about their popularity.” His post seemed to strike a testing nerve which is revealed in some of the comments of that post.
Both of these posts were well-timed for me as I have just finished reading a very interesting book, The Sociopath Next Door. As the title suggests, the book is about Sociopaths. These are people that lack the ability to care. They have no conscience. Every move they make is merely to make themselves more comfortable even if it requires looking like they are helping others. The book illustrates several examples of sociopaths including the so-called “Captain of Industry” whose sole goal in life is to win, regardless of the pain and chaos it creates for other people.
As I read this book, I kept thinking about testing. At times, I have felt that, as “the tester” I am the conscience of my team. The truth is, I work on a great team where everyone cares about what we release. The more interesting question is, could someone who has no facility for caring about others make a good tester? What if a tester works on a team with a leader who has no ability to care? What happens to the testing?
Before I read Sociopath, I had never stopped to carefully consider the role conscience plays in testing. Critical thinking is great, but it’s equally important to understand people’s motivations. Caring sits in an under-layer that is easily forgotten or dismissed as being yet another “personal” or “soft” topic (I call them hard topics). Perhaps it’s more of a foundation than an under-layer. If so, what does that mean if it’s missing?
