Scott‘s most recent column is called Software testers are not helpless. In it he starts to think about the seemingly cultural problem of testers who feel they are helpless within their organizations (which too often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy). He doesn’t speculate why this happens, but I will.

When I was at HP I would often feel overwhelmingly helpless towards the end of the project. Why? ‘Because they were releasing it when I told them they shouldn’t. They should listen to me! Don’t they know how dumb they are being?’, etc. This also led to a bit of burn-out and drop in performance as ‘they are going to ship regardless of what I say’.

Huh?

Clearly this was me operating in a manner completely inconsistent to the way I do now. At the time my mission, as I perceived it, was to control the release based upon the quality information I had gathered. James enlightened me to the mission I use now. I provide information. An input. Some small (though important) part of the greater decision. This reorientation removes a lot of the sources negative thought that leads to helplessness.

Is the sole solution to internalize the more realistic mission of providing quality information to stakeholders? Well, not quite. The other half I think is to take responsibility for the things that are making you feel helpless. Some examples:

  • Need something changed on a server? Learn how to configure it.
  • Is a bug thwarting you in some way? Learn to fix it.
  • Does your process suck? Propose and champion a solution.
  • Want static checks included in your build system? Integrate it.

Self-empowerment and clarity of a realistic mission are two powerful tools to help remedy to helplessness. I’m sure there are others, but I think those ones cross personality types (extrovert and introvert) and are ones that can be implemented in most organizations. (Just ease your change of your mission on management; they don’t like change this big all that fast.)