Its funny how things work sometimes. You go to a conference as a speaker and folks look at you as if you have all the answers. People send you emails with questions and want an answer. Sometimes they want a “Yes” or a “No.” Sometimes they are hoping that the “expert” they are asking will be able to shed some light on their archane situation. (Yeah, I’ve done that.)
I had a strange thing happen the other day. I was asked a question. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get asked questions alot. I also ask lot of questions. So, the fact that there was a question involved in this is not the strange thing. The strange thing was the way the question was posed. And it has something to do with the first rambling paragraph. This person asked me a question and wanted an “expert’s opinion.”
What, me? Ask Michael Bolton or James Bach or Cem Kaner or Karen Johnson or Boris Beizer or Elisabeth Hendrickson or Fiona Charles or… you get the idea.
I guess my deal is that I don’t feel like an expert. I feel like a guy who makes mistakes. Ask the folks I work with. Man, did I ever have a blooter this week. Huge mistake. I missed stuff that if I had looked more aggressively, that if I had tried a variation I had not considered, I would have found it. I didn’t. Then there was another problem that was a calculated risk. We could not test everything because of a variety of constraints. Then, as folks are trying it in the field, they found a problem in an area we could not exercise. Gah.
The really weird thing is that even when I know I make mistakes, and my co-workers make mistakes, we all do our best to learn from them. We can each push eachother to achieve better and do better testing. How do we do that? By looking honestly at what we do – both right and wrong.
To do that, you must put aside the CYA mode that most of us have learned and admit our shortcomings – first to ourselves, individually, then to our team. Then, and not before then, you can learn from your mistakes.
Am I an exepert? I don’t know – I don’t feel like one. I’m a tester who sometimes makes mistakes, even though I try and avoid making them.
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