re: This Is Your Brain On RST

Michael Bolton — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 02:42:30 GMT

The point of the exercise was to test a certain object. At one point the brave soul who volunteered asked Michael whether anyone else had ever tested the object. Michael replied that many people had. I expected him to say "In fact, someone in this room has", but he didn't.

I was following the standard progression of the exercise (the script?!), in which the other testers are fictitious. You may be a lot of things, Michael, but you're definitely not fictitious. It would have been interesting, in retrospect, to have pointed her to you and to have watched the result. I simply never thought to do it. That was a missed opportunity. I'd like to be smarter in future situations like that one. Oh well.

Even people who seem to be in charge, to know everything that is going on, do not think to give us every piece of information they could provide.

That might be because they don't think of it, either (see above). Compassion for the poor sods who manage us is an important attribute for a tester. Compassion for our managers is important, since we spend much of the days being our own managers.

There was likely a point in the exercise at which Michael would have welcomed my offering assistance to the others, but I was still working under my original - unverified - assumption.

Ha ha! This is so much like the dynamics between two people in a software project--or anywhere else, for that matter: one person doesn't think of something; the other thinks of it and doesn't say anything.

Mind reading does not work.

For me, that's near the top of the list of Important Things to Remember--along with "Don't take it personally."

Thanks for endorsement, Michael. I learn more from teaching the course each time--and your participation and insights (then and now) helped make this class highly educational for everyone.

Cheers,

---Michael B.