A year later Alasdair was wished onto the test team. He was given a compiler to write
test objectives for and a severe dressing down when his specs were reviewed. The test manager had
enquired:
???What does this test do????
???Mmm.???
We will draw a veil. Alasdair went away chastened. He wrote. He returned. His test objectives
were reviewed and approved. He wrote some tests. He ran them.
There was silence from Alasdair for several days. He arrived early; he left late. And he started
finding bugs. Big ones. Ones the Corporation had been plagued with for years Alasdair had found
himself.
So he worked as he had never worked before, and then resigned to become a test manager.
4 Yes, they are both Scots.
A
The Test Team and Its Context 179
passivity which reinforces the failure to plan by claiming that planning is useless, the situation
changes too fast. Procrastination thus becomes institutionalized.
Project and test managers must survive in these dysfunctional states. You need to see the project manager
and yourself in relationship to them.
9.7.1 Relations with Project Management
Project management is trying to do something very much against the odds. They tend to see testers as
the people who stop them. Like everyone else they suffer from a number of shortcomings with very
serious effects:
??? Time-discounting: time is discounted by perceiving events as being farther away in time than
they are. Events such as angry customers cancelling, are rarely imagined, much less prepared for.
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