Two ideas smooshed into one in this post.

The first is the kinda myth that Testers (QA folk) are Agents of Change within an organization. We have the power to mould the product or service into our belief structure. And this is true some of the time, and sometimes very untrue. And this isn’t necessarily bad.

The true phase begins immediately after after joining a group. You are the outsider. Once you are an insider, people have bias and opinions about you which colour their opinions of your ideas. This cross-reference is deadly to your change agency roll. How much success have you had leading a change in a different direction on a team where you are established? (And do not have organizational clout to lead the charge as Testers rarely have it.)

I remember hearing a podcast from David Linthicum where he mentioned a survey or something which showed most successful SOA projects where proceeded by a change in the CTO/CIO. The implication was that the previous holder of the title had lost the audience’s attention. No doubt they will be replaced by the next great architectural wave.

How long this period lasts is a bit of a mystery. (Gee, thanks Adam.) Sometimes it ends with an obvious bang, but other times it is subtle. If you miss the change, then you might succeed in change, but it likely will be through happenstance rather your actions. So what are some signs? Here are some that I have witnessed recently (and not necessarily directly about me)

  • Sighs during meetings when you start to speak
  • Your follies are discussed on length
  • Emails get routed to the blackhole (faster)

Can you get back your Agent of Change title once it has fizzled? I suspect so, but I suspect it might need to come with organizational clout. And once you have that clout you need to work twice as hard to maintain it as your agency half-life has decreased significantly.

One final thing.

Being an Agent of Change is fun and certainly rewarding as there is often a bug finding multiplier for fixing a busted process. But providing quality-related information to stakeholders can also be fun and rewarding too. The trick is for you, and your management, to understand which role you are supposed to be playing, which you are playing and if there is a divergence of the two.