Rahul Verma: My Petty Bits

Force Multiplier. A new Think-Word for me. It came into my life as recent as last week after an excellent keynote by Tariq King at Agile Testing Days Open Air, Cologne, a testing festival my organisation trendig technology services GmbH organises every year.

Not many testers read my work. It’s my responsibility to share it with the ones who do how important we are as humans for each other. Nothing earth-shattering there. No big reveal. Hello Captain Obvious. Yes, I know :-).

Still, hear me out.

The Background

In my interpretation, Tariq’s talk – “Combining Force Multipliers to Improve Quality” is a beautiful expansion to the The People-Process-Technology Iron Triangle. I encourage you to attend his talk when possible. An earlier version of his talk can be found as a video recording here: https://lnkd.in/e-MnykPr

The PPT triangle is a part of my Infinity model of Imperfect Quality as well as seen below at the heart of My Quality Cage (I replace the People to Me here assuming I am a human too 🙂 and also because this model is more of a personal model for me):

Today I was thinking about it in the context of some personal stories. There are also several discussions on LI which are the reason behind writing this article at this stage.

The Me-Process-Technology Triangle

What’s the purpose of Process? To assist me.

What’s the purpose of Technology? To assist me.

What do I do to the best extent in my power to a Process? Learn about it, tailor-make it, improve it to assist me.

What do I do to the best extent in my power to a Technology? Learn about it, tailor-make it, improve it to assist me.

No. That’s not being narcissistic.

I am a Malang by spirit.

I am a non-Malang for the practical realities.

This aligns with the Shu (Stay Alive) – Ha (Stay Relevant) – Ri (Stay Malang) zones in The Ambidexterity Continuum of Testing I documented earlier:

This tailor-made unnamed process that I am not dogmatic about is the force-multiplier for me.

This tailor-mode usage of a technology without being dogmatic about it is the force-multiplier for me.

Above both these two, people I am associated with are the force-multipliers for me. This article series and its continuity is not my power. It’s yours.

Above all, I am the force-multiplier for me. If I remain non-dogmatic, if I continue treating humans as THE force multiplier, more than the process and technology pieces which are force multipliers too, I will continue becoming a better self.

Processes and Technologies serve us the best when they are targeted to bring the best out of People who are going to use them.

A Real Story of a Force Multiplier

I’ve been mostly silent about it in public. Only a few friends of mine know it. But this story is so powerful, that I’ll need to share it. I hope that some of the people involved have found their peace and happiness in life by this time, which they were trying to find earlier by hurting others. I’ll not take their names. You can find the reason for it my Brilliance Borderland and Bullsh*t article in this series.

I was young. Yes, you can believe that despite the visual feedback available to you today :-).

I was emotional. I had anger. Both of them uncontrollable, untamed.

I had just joined a performance engineering team and I was completely new to the subject. It was little more than 2 years in IT industry for me, after experimenting with database testing and test automation for 2 years. I was an engineer by designation.

I’ve little regard for people who mistreat other people. So, I used to express myself very openly, almost in the same rude tone or worse than what I was being subjected to. At the time the default expression was anger. Fearlessness? Lack of self-control? Whatever.

I had solved a deep problem which the other experienced people could not, including my lead who used to position himself very strongly in the subject. That was the final nail. He plotted to get me fired by questioning my performance. He made false objections as he had to put together a list of reasons. His boss helped him with that too as this particular lead didn’t know how to write a proper firing email :-). I offered to the management to accept it as I could not tolerate ungrounded insults. I offered to let go of the mandatory notice period and any monetory compensation.

As it happens, I was called to a meeting with Jothi Gouthaman (my department manager) and Kalyan Rao Konda (Jothi’s boss and also an interviewer for me during hiring process). I expected the worst of course. And something magical happened. I remember the words vaguely so it is a paraphrased version registered in my mind (I’ve memory issues in remembering stuff).

Jothi said – They are questioning your knowledge. You can continue complaining or kill with knowledge.

Kill with knowledge.

Words I never forgot.

Kalyan said – You are fighting nonsense. We understand that. But now you have brought the fight to this table. We don’t want that. We are promoting you to a Lead position.

It’s your fight. Go fight it. Don’t come running back to us as a crying child.

The meeting took less than 30 minutes.

I was promoted.

This and later interactions with Jothi Gouthaman are the reasons for what I became later in my career. For the next 10 years, I studied about testing and technology regularly. I started learning and sharing what I learned with others too to fight the authoritarian bullsh*t I was fighting. I started a learning group which at its peak was about 15 colleagues and we learned Perl as a programming language by dividing the syllabus. A year later, I became a public presenter with my talk “User Behavior and Performance Perception Analysis” in 2007 at STeP-IN forum. Jothi is the single most important individual in my professional life. The story above is the trigger for it all. You are reading this rant as an article today because of Jothi 🙂 (sorry Jothi!).

Today I guess 5-10 testers read me regularly. Those testers should know that this journey didn’t start with me. Look back and this story starts with Jothi Gouthaman. Look further back and at the root of this story is my mother – my first teacher and my biggest force multiplier who made me (literally) and in spirit – my first mentor and true friend.

In the last 20 years, I have contributed to processes and technologies as well. All my work. Everything. The force behind them originates with a human, not a process or technology. That’s what force multiplying means to me.

Why This Story

Of course this is just one story. I shared names of various other people in the previous article to whom I owe my learning and motivation. When I look at them, I feel life is good.

The reason I shared this story in particular is that Test Management is being confused with Project Management today. Test Managers have the power and role to be the force multipliers for the testers in the organisation as well as for the other roles they are bridging with the testing team. One such test manager changed my professional life once for all in just 1 year, 17 years back.

This story is also important because it continues to raise a critical question for me – What have I done for others?

That’s all for now.