Beautiful Teams

Starting Off Right

This team had more going for it than many other teams. They knew how to work together as developers. They were talented people who all wanted to do a good job. And they were open to working in whatever way the project required them to work to do a good job and meet Big Cheese's commitments.

The team had a "gentlemanly" culture. They didn't swear when things went badly. They did let off steam with pranks. It was acceptable to call each other "brain-dead" when someone made a dumb mistake. But it wasn't acceptable to use profanity or be late for meetings.

Technically, they had other assets. Their automated regression test suite had worked for the most recent release. They had an automated build system. And they were familiar with code review, unit tests, and continuous integration.

Before the team started on the performance work or the new features, they decided to fix the regression test suite, so they would know that the current builds worked without having to do manual testing.

The developers and the previous testers convened a regression test meeting.

Jack, a tester, started explaining how the regression tests worked. "OK, everyone look at page 3, that's where the central loop for the tests is."

Sam interrupted, "No, that's not the central loop. Look at page 6—that's the central loop."

Jill, the other tester, piped up, "No, you just don't understand how it works. Look at the main part on page 2. See the sequencing?"

Sam glared at Jill, "Do you think I'm brain-dead? Any ...