Interesting quotes from the books I've read recently...

I've not long finished 'The Speed of Trust' - by Robert M. R. Covey. I came across this book by referral (of sorts). I was attending a session at the KJRA Summer School, presented by Dr. Mark Pedersen on 'Test Project Management'and Mark referred to this book to demonstrate a point he'd made.

I can't remember the specific point, but I liked the sound of the book, and identified through my own experiences (professionally) were my managers had just trusted me to 'do testing'.

I'm convinced (imo) that within the software development industry, testing is still considered a 'dark art' and/or a 'necessary evil' and therefore not well understood (a topic for another time)! So trust in the test manager and the testing team is critical to success. So often the stakeholders we test on behalf of, take our word (trust us) on the assessment of the defects we've found, and the results of the test cases we've run.

I also found myself nodding my head and agreeing out loud when the book described the effect of high and low trust on speed and cost of everyday transactions, and the notion of 'trust taxes' being applied through either lower speed or increased costs - all true.

Here's a couple of quotes I noted, and the reasons why they made sense or I identified with them - six (6) to be exact:

1) "You should not be satisfied with being a victum, nor with being a survivor. You should aim to be a conqueror." Dr. Laura Schlessinger

Recently I worked on a gig where I was so not seeing eye to eye with all whom I have should been and it made my job soooo much harder to do. It was a lowest of low trust environments, I an outsider - even worse, a contractor - oh no. But anyway the role nearly broke me, but it didn't kill me and I am certainly stronger for it. At first I thought I just survived, but then after returning I found out that I was part of a watershed in perception, and assisted to change the direction for the better. I liken my influence to a tug boat assisting a large ship change course, the ship with its rudder fully starboard, will eventually turn around, but with a little tug boat pushing at the bow, it turns a lot quicker!

The concqueror bit came through another conversation which went something like "the boss said in a meeting, I want reports like Andrew used to give me, ones that actually give me information... and I also want them daily like he used to do!" I thought, that's great after all the resistance I encountered obtaining the data for those reports, tis great to know that now they have to do it my way!

2) In reference to training staff - Question: "What if you train everyone and they all leave?" CEO Response "What if we don't train them and they all stay?" - anon CEO.

It's often been a discussion topic, about the risk involved if you train up the young talent and then watch them walk out the door, and the same is said for contractors in an organisation - they should train themselves. But how does this assist your organisation to grow and become more efficient? It's an interesting point, all to often I've seen staff leave because another company has offered/promised better training and/or options for career progression. My personal experience has been that by allowing staff to go on training has been win, win. The staff have gained some skills, and that means I can push them into areas where I couldn't previously...

3) "we all make mistakes. If you can't make mistakes, you can't make decisions." Warren Buffett.

This is a great comment, all decisions envolve risk and if people are not empowered to take some risks then there is little chance of reward.

4) "There are no facts, only interpretations." Friedrich Nietzsche

I've always been of the opinion that there are three (3) sides to a story, his, mine and the truth somewhere in the middle. This quote challenges that view a little. I think it might also be equally as true as the "There are no defects, only interpretations of software features!"...

5) "We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

Everyone who's ever been knocked back for a job at the 'next level up' knows how one feels...

6) Tom Watson "If you wanted to increase your success rate, double your failure rate."

This reminded me about an Agile development comment I heard once, in terms of failing it was 'Fail fast, Fail often, Fail better' and was along the lines "If at first you don't succeed, try again".

There was so many more pages that I folded over, with highlighter or pen underlining just like I used to do while studying at university, but these would have to be the top 6.