Real-time Collaboration

Many of us are now communicating through twitter which means that arguments, conversation and even software testing itself is evolving in real time. Real time is no longer a future possibility, but for most of us, the reality.

Personally, I have found this new real-time focus very challenging because, despite the collaborative possibilities, it’s too easy to say something careless and stupid that you can’t take back. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gosh, that wombat joke was so funny at the time!” I know I have. Even if you can delete a tweet, that doesn’t mean nobody saw it. On a larger scale, this places all of the petty, back-channel political squabbling of our software testing eco-system in a front-and-center position like never before.

The communal win of real-time communication is that now, if we’re going to argue, there is more motivation to make it constructive instead of disparaging. For an example of this, see this article on Code Coverage by Alan Page and Matt Heusser. I was happy to write the introduction, but in all honesty, these two great men shepherded themselves through the writing of this article. The testing community is much better for it. Their original twitter conversation could have devolved into petty squabbling, but Alan and Matt were able to turn their conversation around. The resulting article is thought provoking, and shows what can be accomplished when testers who strongly disagree have an honest and respectful exchange about why they disagree. I want more of this.

Fellow von TesterBlogger, Lanette Creamer, has been writing, brilliantly, about respectful discourse. As of now, she has written these two posts: Post 1, Post 2. I love what she has said about diversity because it highlights how our communication is changing and the need for each of us to be open enough to change our own ways of communicating. I am having to re-learn how I discuss and debate with others because I’m being exposed to people who communicate in a very different ways to which I am not at all accustomed. I can only hope that others will allow for my differences in this ever-widening, two-way street of the real-time world.

I am an atheist, but have found valuable treasures within Christianity as I have in other world religions. I altered the passage below from the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi and try to follow it with every communication I make. If I’m in doubt about something I’m about to say or post, I look over this. It’s never steered me wrong. I make mistakes like everyone else does, but if I do, I come back to this. I read it over and try again.

I am an instrument of peace,
Where there is hatred, I will show love;
where there is injury, I will forgive;
where there is doubt, I will show faith;
where there is despair, I will hope;
where there is darkness, I will be light;
where there is sadness, I will be joy;

I will do my best to console more than I seek to be consoled;
I will do my best to understand more than I seek to be understood;
and I will do my best to love even more than I try to be loved.

For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we find forgiveness;
and it is in living gracefully that that we will find the eternal.