TWST is the Toronto Workshop on Software Testing and is, well, a workshop on software testing in Toronto hosted annually by Fiona Charles and Michael Bolton.

This year Fiona posted this as a focusing topic:

*I’m really interested in how we report on testing to project stakeholders.

Do we use narratives, graphics, metrics, or a combination? How do we decide which is most appropriate for the context?

There’s often a dichotomy between how/what we want to report (and believe we should) and how managers and others expect us to report. How do we resolve the differences to everyone’s satisfaction — or at least acceptance?*

I had no idea what I was going to talk about that would generate discussion, until I listened to Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers. You know, the book about the 10 000 hour rule for excellence. Except that rule is chapter 2 — and that it. There is so much more to it, including the notion of Mitigated Speech. That to me was the most important part of the book. And I think fits (loosely) to the topic of TWST this year.

**[Mitigation](http://www.slideshare.net/agoucher/mitigation-4768261 "Mitigation")**</param></param></param></embed>

Let’s start with a definition (according to Gladwell) of mitigated speech.

Any attempt to downplay or sugarcoat the meaning of what is being said

How often do we see this when communicating our quality related information to stakeholders who are not going to like what they are going to hear.

In Outliers, Gladwell makes heavy use of the research contained in the paper Cultural Diversity and Crew Communication to analyze the communications of a well known plane crash.

So what are the levels of mitigation?

  • Command – This is all about Power Distance. How do you perceive and relate to your superiors? Your culture’s PDI has a lot to do with that.
  • Team Obligation Statement – Reduces the power distance in the relationship as it includes but the receiver and the sender in the action.
  • Team Suggestion – Equal power distance and implies full evolvement of both receiver and sender.
  • Query – A concession that the sender is not in charge, and is phrased as a question
  • Preference – Possible preferred actions presented in terms of I think or I feel
  • Hint – Are a reminder to some previous goal but don’t directly suggest the actual action the sender is hoping for. In fact could result in a different action.

Note that nowhere is there an indictment of any of these mitigation levels. The trick is to know what they are, when you are using which level — and whether it is appropriate at that particular context.