User has been deleted!

In previous blogs, I’ve told a few stories about how bad a software tester, Becky, is at communicating. Sometimes, it seems like she is trolling. Here is another story:

“My user has been deleted when I clicked the refresh button, how do I undo?”.
Becky

Well, I think you should have panicked and logged a high priority bug if that was the case.

There’s obviously more to this than she is stating. Your user doesn’t mysteriously vanish by clicking a button which says something other than “Delete”. What makes her think she can undo this action? Why does she think this is normal?

I replied, asking her for more information: What was she trying to do? What does she remember clicking before it happened?

Becky ignores my requests and directs her messages to a select few software testers.

What are the testers going to do? If there’s a serious bug, it needs to go to a developer to investigate, and promptly!

Why was she ignorant of my attempt to help? It made me think if she doubted what she was writing, and deep-down; she knew her user hadn’t been deleted afterall.

I decided to play around with the software and click some random buttons, but I noticed something peculiar pretty quickly.

It turns out there was a bug in the displayed list of users. Her user existed, it just didn’t show it unless you selected a different filter button; then reselect the initial filter.

She didn’t bother logging a bug. It’s literally her job as a software tester.

Becky arranging testing

“for those that will be helping out with the Phase 2 testing, the suite is here…”
Becky

I think we have around 5 testers in the team, and only 1 tester responded to Becky. This testing seemed urgent and the fact that she said “for those that will be helping” – this made out it was the testers, plus some other non-testers as volunteers.

As a developer, you assume you aren’t needed – because you’re a developer. But if a tester says their testing is urgent and they need help, then they may request volunteers. It was the first I’d heard of this, and it seemed weird that only 2 people were actually testing.

I questioned the statement, and apparently Becky wanted testers AND developers to volunteer. Why didn’t she say something? She managed to make it sound like people had already been told if they were doing it.

She is so bad at communicating.

Maybe that’s why the Testers weren’t even testing it.

Becky is a Senior Tester and I remember our Team Lead saying he was going to give her more responsibility because she wanted to progress her career. Well, she can’t even manage to get Testers assigned to do some software testing, so what hope do we have?

Arguments on the Major Incident Call

When a serious bug is found, there’s all kinds of managers that have a call to discuss it, along with some representation from Development – so at least one Developer and preferably a Tester too.

I got asked to join the call, and there’s like 8-10 people on this call. The representative from Support has roughly described the bug, and how often it has been reported.

Then there are a few managers bickering if the Major Incident is a Medium or High severity. The thing is, we all know it needs fixing urgently, and from my point of view, it doesn’t matter what severity they actually give it. Maybe the managers care because it depends who they have to notify and follow a different process.

I just know that I need to fix it as soon as I can.

However, while the call is going on, this is time wasted because a developer isn’t looking at it. I had been told there was a bug in a particular area, and I know I’ll be the person trying to fix the issue, but I cannot start because I’m on the call. I could multitask, but I wasn’t given the stack trace or recreation steps, so I was left waiting. It would be hard to concentrate if I was half-listening to the call too.

I think that meeting went on for an hour, which is an hour lost. It should have just gone straight to development, then argued about the trivial details whilst it is being looked at. They had further calls anyway for updates, so they could have had better updates from the development team.

At that point, I may have been able to tell them:

When it was introduced
What caused this change in behaviour
How serious it is – does it affect other areas that haven’t been reported yet.

So they basically try to discuss things they know nothing about. Ideally, they just need an initial meeting with the “stakeholders” to bring attention to the problem, make sure people are assigned for responsibility/accountability reasons, then arrange a time to reconvene to discuss further.

Remote Standup Meetings

We have a daily “standup” meeting where each person in the team says what they did yesterday and what they are going to do today. You can also highlight any “blockers” that will prevent you from completing your work.

Since we are all working remotely, we just do them using Microsoft Teams. At first we just nominated someone to speak next, but since we have around 10 people in the team, and people don’t really listen or pay attention, then we ended up with people asking: “has everyone been?” – when only half of the team has been.

When Microsoft Teams introduced the “Raise Hand” feature, we used it as a flag to show who still needs to talk. Still, Colin says “who is next? Matt have you been?”. Yes he has been, why don’t you choose one of the 6 people with their hands raised?

Another point which illustrates that people don’t listen, is when I say something like “I’ve sent a Pull Request for my work but no one has reviewed it yet, can someone review it?”. Then three hours later, no one has reviewed it.

I think the problem is often that people are so focussed on what they have to say, then they don’t listen. I was watching a video about it and the guy reckoned the “walking the board” method gains more attention. This method is where you look at your “Kanban board” which shows you all the work your team is doing. Then you can go through each item in turn, and the relevant people can then speak up. I still think you’ll have the same problem since you know that you will have to speak when it gets to your work.

There are a couple of people that seemed to nominate people without even looking at the attendees, so then they end up in embarrassing situations where they say “Rob can go next”, but Rob isn’t actually on the call. Sometimes it was well-known that they don’t actually work that day because they are part time.

We also have someone in our team that just deals with Test Environments so isn’t directly involved in our work. We did raise the point that it is stupid for him to attend the stand-up meetings but our manager said he wants it to continue so he feels part of the team and also gets to hear the team talk. I guess that is a good point – since we are at home, we don’t get to hear our colleagues speak much.

His updates are so boring, and he delivers them in a really bored tone. I often think he doesn’t have much work to do, so just says words to blag it:

had to restart some servers, and upgrade some RAM.
signed off some policies, and am looking at patching some security vulnerabilities.
I sat down with Dan for a bit and went through some tickets. Got some other tickets. Need to review some policies. Still need to complete some security vulnerability patches.
Busy doing environment stuff, mainly security updates which I’ve almost finished. Just need to do some Virtual Machines today. There’s about 40-50 clients so that’s going to take the full day, maybe tomorrow as well.
Catching up on comms, am currently resetting a password, and then gonna look at some more environment tickets.

How long does resetting a password take? Is any of that actually useful to the team anyway? He may as well just say “Environments stuff” then choose the next person.

Another thing that always happens is when you pick someone to go next and you are met with silence. So you say “you are on mute!”, then a few seconds later “oh yeah, sorry I was on mute”. Here are some classic “mute” scenarios that I wrote down:

Becky: “Good morning Colin”
*few seconds of silence*
Colin: *bland tone* “good morning”
Becky: “You sound down, Colin”
Colin: “I said ‘good morning’ but I was on mute, so that's my second attempt.”

James: "Can everyone see my screen ok?"
*silence*
Becky: "yeah, sorry I was on mute"
Colin: "yeah, sorry I was on mute"
Matt: "yeah, sorry I was on mute"

Matt: "Colin, have you been?"
*silence*
Matt: "You still have your hand up"
*silence*
Matt: "you are also on mute"
*silence*
Colin: "I'm on mute? how did that happen?

And a bonus scenario:

Becky: "this meeting has started early!"
Colin: "who started it?"
Matt: "it was you Colin"

U-Turns

On the back of “Testing and Developer Equality”, Colin highlighted some minor problems in the code base and made a statement of “Any Tester should be comfortable picking up these items and writing code to fix it”.

One of the Testers spoke up and said “Not all Testers are comfortable, I for one have no interest in coding. Please don’t ask me to code”.

Then Colin quickly u-turned and said “I never said all Testers can code, but the ones that are interested in learning can pick these up”.

That’s not what you said Colin.

U-Turn #2

A Tester asked for help diagnosing an issue he found, and asked who could debug the problem on the Test Environment. Colin replied, and made a statement about having to install some debugging tools and how it’s going to be difficult because it’s a server-side problem.

Many developers have made comments in the past on how it’s basically impossible for us to debug server-side issues with our infrastructure (we can obviously run the client and server locally on our own computers, but sometimes problems are with specific data on the Test Environments).

Recently, I tried it to see what the problem actually is, and it worked perfectly fine. No idea where this myth came from, but it’s been passed on for years. You don’t actually need to debug the actual server. You can run the server locally as long as it is the same version. You just need to point towards the Test Environment’s databases rather than your own.

So after Colin’s statement, I described my findings about debugging the server and data.

Colin then responded “I never said that you cannot debug the server”.

I knew he was talking nonsense. He was definitely implying you cannot debug the server. I also remember he said it a few weeks prior. I searched Slack for his post history and I found it.

“If server side, then we have to try to recreate the issue in our own environment.”
Colin

I don’t get why people can’t just seem to admit they were wrong and be grateful for your information. I normally write something like “oops, I was mistaken” and then choose a funny emoji like 😖or 😜

“Working Closely”

My manager calls me.

Manager: “Do you know Andy?”

Me: “Yes, he is one of my best friends”

Manager: “Great, because you will be working closely with him.”

Me: “Brilliant news. So does he know about it? How do we go about splitting up the work; is it a big project?”

Manager: “Well, simple answer; you aren’t splitting it; you are doing it all.”

Me: “Oh.”

How is that working closely? After I got more information, it turns out all I was doing is merging some of Andy’s work into another code branch. Andy could have just done it. Complete hype for nothing.

I Agree

There’s one guy in my team that always wants to portray himself positively. So he loves talking, and, in my opinion, he basically keeps taking credit for other people’s ideas; or at least wants people to think he had some contribution to them.

So here are some clichéd phrases that he reels off in every meeting:

When someone says something good:

“I was just about to say that”
“I agree with that”
“I was just thinking that”

If he thinks someone knows more than him:

“We need to touch base”
“We need to arrange a catch-up so we are on the same page”

If he says something stupid:

“I’m only asking the question for everyone’s benefit”
“I just wanted to call it out so the decision is documented”

Becky did a similar thing the other day:

Becky: “a menu option disappears until you log out and back in again. Do you think that is a feature?”

Sean: “Sounds like a bug”

Becky: “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking”

Sean: “If we introduced it, this will need to be fixed before the release goes out”

Becky: “Yeah, that’s what I was thinking”

No, you were thinking it was a feature like an idiot.

It turns out she was just logging in with a different user profile. So the feature wasn’t there to begin with on the first profile.

It annoys me when people just pretend to agree. If you don’t understand something, then someone needs to explain it to you more. In the first example, he does ask questions to get the information, but he also claims he agrees in an unreasonable number of situations. If someone comes up with an awesome idea, let them have their moment of glory rather than using phrases like “I was just about to say that”; because that devalues their contribution.

Awkward Call With The Customer

I get invited to a call with a customer about an important enhancement. It’s about an area of the system I have very basic knowledge of. The call is in 30 minutes so there’s no time to read up on anything.

If it’s an internal call, then it can be embarrassing but it’s easy to explain the situation. For an external call; then as a company, we seem like idiots.

I tell my manager that there is only one developer that knows about it; Bruce. Luckily my manager contacts him and he agrees to come onto the call. I’m still required for some reason.

I still anticipated it would be really awkward. The customer says, “can we all introduce ourselves”. So they all take turns.

“I’m Sharon, lead customer representative in Team A.”

“I am Bruce, I was the Lead Developer on the original project and have been involved in related project X”.

Everyone has great credentials. It eventually gets to me. I don’t have a fancy job title or any related credentials to this call.

<awkwardly>“I am A developer”
Me

Luckily, the customer did the majority of the talking, and Bruce chipped in to deny/challenge the occasional suggestion. I would have been doomed if I didn’t manage to get Bruce involved. He saved the company reputation there.

Surely, we knew about this arranged call days ago. How did we get into this situation? It’s another management failure.

How To Make Your Team Hate You #1

I was thinking about the colleagues I’ve legitimately despised (and it’s not just my opinion), and most of them have something in common: they have either been promoted, or told they will get promoted if they prove themselves. So here is story number 1.

When I was a Tester, I was on an important project and was pushing the time. It wasn’t my fault, it was just the nature of the project, the nature of the testing, and the fixed deadline. I always knew it would be a tight schedule. I didn’t want to sacrifice quality though and I knew the only way I could get it out in time if everything just worked, with no bugs and technical problems, and I needed 100% concentration to prove it.

I get interrupted by the newly promoted Test Lead. He sits there for several minutes berating me for the slow progress and starts reeling off a speech about how important the project was to the company. I kept on telling him I already understood and his speech was wasting my time and delaying me further. Obviously in addition to demoralising me.

After he finally left, the Lead Developer on my team exclaimed “who the hell does he think he is, talking to you like that?”

I’d never seen this developer angry before. He always had a calm demeanor. But he was furious.

The next day, the Test Leads line manager pulled me into a meeting and said the matter had been dealt with and that will never happen again. I then realised the Lead Developer must have reported him.

The lesson here is that if you do get promoted, make sure it doesn’t go to your head. Yeah, you have to manage people, but having a new fancy job title doesn’t mean you have to go wild. You are working with people. You are still working with your old colleagues. Treat them with respect and be more understanding. I think a lot of managers lead by example and gain respect by being nice.

Public Speaking Expert

A former colleague left to set up some kind of business to do with public speaking. He did have a fairly short-lived video channel where he posted up vlogs about software.

He was a terrible speaker.

There was one video where I thought his dialogue was so funny, I typed up the transcript, so I can laugh about it in the future. Well, I have found the notes. Here it is:

The reason for that is that a good friend of mine, erm, erm Neil, who I went to university with, erm, commented on Facebook, er and said, you know ‘what do you mean by “Digital Service”, surely it is just software?’.

Erm, oh erm and, I…yes it is just software, erm… but I…I’m trying to make a distinction, erm, erm, trying to make a point about, erm, er the nature of software and the nature of delivering software and that to me, erm software IS a digital service.

Erm, erm… you know… erm, there’s there’s, you’ll not have come across a software project that erm… simply, erm… you deliver the software and you walk away, erm that never usually happens, you you, you are actually delivering a service, because erm when you deliver software erm you sort of committed to support that software, you committed to provide a service, erm, for me, software engineering is actually all about, erm, taking a service and transforming that service, such that you are providing new features, new functionality, maybe you are joining things up.

Maybe you’re, erm, erm, you are seeking to refresh that service, you are seeking to, erm… ensure that service is continuing to deliver the value it’s meant to deliver. You are maybe looking to make sure the service is more efficient. You, you’re using, you’re developing some software, delivering some software to transform a service.
“Software” vs “Digital Service”

I hope you understood that, because I certainly didn’t.

People often add filler sounds like “erm” when they are nervous, but he had all the time in the world to write a script, record it, and edit it. It’s not a great promotion of his “skills” that he is selling.