ober 2024 ng
At work we had a slight incident. For context, our release cycle typically follows around a 6-8 week cycle. In the last couple of releases the testing phase had been rather chaotic, with a compound of annual leave and delayed development work causing testing to be compressed into rather tight windows. A date was given for a release that was cutting things pretty close, and this made the testers on the team concerned, and they began to raise the alarm.
In the first instance, this didn't cause any change to the process, and yet again we continued with the release date unchanged. I began to see other disturbing signs like testers working late (as in, unreasonably late), and even leave being cancelled or denied.
It was time to step in.
I began by having conversations with the testing team directly, to make sure that the frustration I could feel in the air was indeed due to this squeeze. Having confirmed this, I mentioned it in our next Retro. For those unfamiliar with Agile meetings, Retros are regular meetings usually every 2 weeks and are a space to comment on how things have gone in the past. I began with a prompt on the topic and then handing over to the testers to fully explain, simultaneously giving them affirmation that their issues were valid and giving them the platform to speak.
As an action going forward, we agreed that the tester's time pre-release should be baked into a process, where a full 2 weeks would be allocated to them to test, and no changes (besides fixes to issues they found) would be made in that time. Personally,
When working to deliver features and products, it's easy to overly focus on 'getting the job done' at the expense of looking at the processes that you use to get there, and also your team's health. These trade-offs lead to a longer-term degredation of performance, delaying releases and future projects. Left alone, this can snowball to a mass exodus of a team.
Leading means making people heard.