This is the final post in a series about how and why so many corporations became embroiled in a bureaucratic mess in which social and political skills are more important than competence.
In my first post “Sick bureaucracies and mere technicians” I talked about Edward Giblin’s analysis back in the early 1980s of the way senior managers had become detached from the real work of many corporations. Not only did this problem persist, but it become far worse.
In my second post, “Digital Taylorism & the drive for standardisation“, I explained how globalisation and technical advances gave impetus to digital Taylorism and the mass standardisation of knowledge work. It was widely recognised that Taylorism damaged creativity, a particularly serious concern with knowledge work. However, that concern was largely ignored, swamped by the trends I discussed in my third post, “Permission to think“.
In this post I will try to offer a more constructive conclusion after three essays of unremitting bleakness!
Deskilling – a chilling future for testing?
When it comes to standardisation of testing the “talented managers” (see “Permission to think“) will tell themselves that they are looking at a bigger picture than the awkward squad (ok, I mean context driven testers here) who complain that this is disastrous for software testing.
Many large corporations are hooked into a paradigm that requires them to simultaneously improve quality and reduce costs, and to do so by de-skilling jobs below the elite level. Of course other tactics are deployed, but deskilling is what concerns me here. The underlying assumption is that standardisation and detailed processes will not only improve quality, but also reduce costs, either directly by outsourcing, or indirectly by permitting benchmarking against outsourcing suppliers.
In the case of testing that doesn’t work. You can do it, but at the expense of the quality of testing. Testing is either a thinking, reflective activity, or it is done badly. However, testing is a mere pawn; it’s very difficult for corporate bureaucrats to make an exception for testing. If they were to do that it would undermine the whole paradigm. If testing is exempt then how could decision makers hold the line when faced with special pleading on behalf of other roles they don’t understand? No, if the quality of testing has to be sacrificed then so be it.
The drive for higher quality at reduced cost is so powerful that its underlying assumption is unchallengeable. Standardisation produces simplicity which allows higher quality and lower costs. That is corporate dogma, and anyone who wants to take a more nuanced approach is in danger of being branded a heretic and denied a hearing. It is easier to fudge the issue and ignore evidence that applying this strategy to testing increases costs and reduces quality.
Small is beautiful
Perhaps my whole story has been unnecessarily bleak. I have been talking about corporations and organisations. I really mean large bodies. The gloomy, even chilling, picture that I’ve been painting doesn’t apply to smaller, more nimble firms. Start-ups, technology focused firms, and specialist testing services providers (or the good ones at least) have a clearer idea of what the company is trying to do. They’re far less likely to sink into a bureaucratic swamp. For one thing it would kill them quickly. Also, to hark back to my first post in this series, “Sick bureaucracies and mere technicians“, such firms are more likely to be task dependent, i.e. the more senior people will probably have a deep understanding of the core business. It is their job to apply that knowledge in the interests of the company, rather than merely to run the corporate bureaucracy.
My advice to testers who want to do good work would be to head for the smaller outfits, the task dependent companies. As a heuristic I’d want to work for a company that was small enough for me to speak to anyone, at any time, who had the power to change things. Then, I’d know that if I saw possible improvements I’d have the chance to sell my ideas to someone who could make a difference. One of the most dispiriting things I ever heard was a senior manager in the global corporation where I worked saying “you’re quite right – but you’d be appalled at how high you could go and find people who’d agree with you, but say that they couldn’t change anything”.
What’s to be done?
Nevertheless, many good testers are working for big corporations, and struggling to make things better. They’re not all going to walk out the door, and they shouldn’t just give up in despair. What can they do? Well, plain speaking will have a limited impact – except on their careers. Senior managers don’t like being told “we’re doing rubbish work and you’re acting like an idiot if you refuse to admit that”.
Corporate managers are under pressure to make the bureaucracy more efficient by standardising working practices and processes. In order to do so they have to redefine what constitutes simple, routine work. Testers have to understand that pressure and respond by lobbying to be allowed to carry out that redefinition themselves. Testing has to be defined by those who understand and respect it so that the thoughtful, reflective, non-routine elements are recognised. Testing must be defined in such a way that it can handle complex problems, and not just simple, ordered problems (see Cynefin).
That takes us back to the segmentation of knowledge workers described by Brown, Lauder and Ashton in The Global Auction (see my previous post “Permission to think“). The workforce is increasingly segmented into developers (those responsible for corporate development, not software developers!), who are given “permission to think”, demonstrators who apply processes, and drones who basically follow a script without being required to engage their brains. If testers have to follow a prescriptive, documentation driven standard like ISO 29119 they are implicitly assigned to the status of drones.
Testers must argue their case so they are represented in the class of developers who are allowed to shape the way the corporation works. The arguments are essentially the same as those that have been deployed against ISO 29119, and can be summed up in the phrase I used at the top; testing is either a thinking, reflective activity, or it is done badly. Testing is an activity that provides crucial information to the corporate elite, the “developers”. As such testers must be given the responsiblity to think, or else senior management will be choking off the flow of vital information about applications and products.
That is a tough task, and I’m sceptical about the chances of testers persuading their corporations to buck a powerful trend. I doubt if many will be successful, but perhaps some brave, persuasive and persistent souls will succeed. They deserve respect and support from the rest of the testing profession.
If large corporations won’t admit their approach is damaging to testing then ultimately I fear that their in-house test teams are doomed. They will be sucked into a vicious circle of commoditised testing that will lead to the work being outsourced to cheaper suppliers. If you’re not doing anything worthwhile there is always someone who can do it cheaper.
Where might hope lie?
Perhaps outsourcing might offer some hope for testing after all. A major motive for adopting standards is to facilitate outsourcing. The service that is being outsourced is standard, neatly defined, and open to benchmarking. Suppliers who can demonstrate they comply with standards have a competitive advantage. That is one of the reasons ISO 29119 is so pernicious. Good testing suppliers will have to ignore that market and make it clear that they are not competing to provide cheaper drones, but highly capable, thinking consultants who can provide valuable insights about products and applications.
The more imaginative, context-driven (and smaller?) suppliers can certainly compete effectively in this fashion. After all they are following an approach that is is both more efficient and more effective. Their focus is on testing rather than documentation and compliance with an irrelevant standard. However, I suspect that is exactly why many large corporations are suspicious of such an approach. The corporate bureaucrat is reassured by visible documents and compliance with an ISO standard.
A new framework?
Perhaps there is room for an alternative approach. I don’t mean an alternative standard, but a framework that shows how good context driven testing is responsible testing that can keep regulators happy. It could tie together the requirements of regulators, auditors and governance professionals with context driven techniques, perhaps a particular context driven approach. The framework could demonstrate links between governance needs and specific context driven techniques. This has been lurking at the back of my mind for a couple of years, but I haven’t yet committed serious effort to the idea. My reading and thinking around the subject of corporate bureaucracy for this series of blog posts has helped shape my understanding of why such an alternative framework might be needed, and why it might work.
An alternative framework in the form of a set of specific, practical, actionable guidelines would ironically be more consistent with ISO’s definition of a standard than ISO 29119 itself is.
A standard is a document that provides requirements, specifications, guidelines or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose.
Taking the relevant parts of the definition, the framework would provide guidelines that can be used consistently to ensure that testing services are fit for their purpose.
Could this give corporations the quality of testing they require without having to abandon their worldview? Internal testers might still be defined as drones (with a few, senior testers allowed to be demonstrators). External testers can be treated as consultants and allowed to think.
When discussing ISO 29119, and the approach to testing that it embodies, we should always bear in mind that the standard does not exist to provide better testing. It was developed because it fits a corporate mindset that wants to see as many activities as possible defined as simple and routine. Testers who have a vision of better testing, and a better future for testing, have to understand that mindset and deal with it, rather than just kicking ISO 29119 for being a useless piece of verbiage. The standard really is useless, but perhaps we need a more sophisticated approach than just calling it like it is.
James Christie's Blog 