a little bit of diplomacy goes a long way
During the past week or so, I had been assigned a high-profile piece of work for an upcoming release due yesterday. I was quite nervous as I had no prior knowledge of the project until last week and had not been given any documentation surrounding it, so the level of ambiguity was extremely high. I was told by the individual who passed the work onto me that my lack of background knowledge on the project was not an issue as all I was required to do was execute the tests (in theory).Ā
When IĀ began executing the tests, I got an unpleasant surprise when I discovered how poorly written the test scripts were. I was failing test after test because it was unclear what the key objective was. I thought it best to get some clarification, and as my colleague who wrote the tests had now left the client site, I approached the business analyst (BA) and asked that he sit down with me to review the test results. What I had been failing tests for were things he didnāt even care about, and worse ā another unpleasant surprise - what was scripted had nothing to do with the specific functionalities he had wanted tested, and he was angry! Although it wasn't my fault - I hadnāt done the test planning, test scoping, or the test scripting -Ā this project was now assigned to me, and I had to be responsible for it.Ā
When the 'tough questions' were asked of me, I was drawing blanks - becauseĀ I actually knew nothing. But I wasn't supposed to reveal that to the client...although I can't imagine they didn't pick up on that fact when all I responded with was, "Ummm...". It was definitely embarrassing, and I felt very unprofessional (and slightly angry with my colleague for leaving me in the deep end, and with myself for assuming everything would go smoothly).Ā The senior management team went into panic mode as they scrambled to pull together something for the release that was due the next morning.Ā
I sat around for roughly two hours awaiting the management teamās decision on what would happen to this release.Ā My Buddy and my PM were worried I was freaking out, but in all honesty, I wasn'tĀ that upset. Ultimately, I had to āroll with the punchesā.Ā In the end, an emergency release was made and my stuff was tested and successfully passed. I know this wouldn't have been achieved had I become unnecessarily agitated, so I'm glad I kept level-headed about it and approached the situation with as much positivity as I could muster. Granted, I did have to do a lot more work than was originally expected of me, but I learnt HEAPS because of it - so there's the silver lining.
When the BA approached my PM to complain of what had transpired, I noted that both were extremely diplomatic. The BA did not get upset, he stuck to the facts and he was rational in his argument. My PM was patient and kind, and he acknowledged and admitted to the failure ā there was no defensiveness and only thoughtfulness for what the BA was going through. I found this to be a very helpful way of handling the issue; watching the way he approached the situation taught me a lot about diplomacy, and the importance in working relationships of openly and honestly admitting fault.
How do you handle ambiguity? What approaches have you taken when you've come across poor requirements and bad scripting? What advice would you give for staying calm in stressful situations and avoiding unnecessary confrontation?