Let me tell you about the time I was ambushed at work!

Last week, the awesome PO on our team left the company. We've had quite a bit of flux on our team lately, so her skip level sent us a message asking us to help fill the breach.

This struck me as a bit odd!

In the weeks before her departure, I was sure we'd already agreed to do just that as a team, so my overthinking kicked into gear!

Didn't we already have this conversation?
I wonder what made him think we wouldn't do this?
What caused him to say what he said? i.e. What's the ask behind the ask?

Me being me, I figured I'd ask some clarifying questions, to see if I could get to the bottom of it. I was convinced that if I understood how we define the PO role in our org, it would be a simple matter of mapping the skill to the team member who most closely matched that skill.

So that's what I did.

And thus dear friends, the trap was sprung! 🪤

Well... I walked right into that one

I thought I was doing this:

Alt text: Columbo using his famous catchphrase "...just one more thing".

My teammates, who are clelarly more observant than me, realised what was happening:

Alt text: Office workers camoflaging themselves as someone walks into the room.

Because my skip level and his direct reports apparently heard it like this:

Alt text: Katniss Everdeen volunteering in a scene from the movie The Hunger Games

Well. Shit!

It looks like I'd been Voluntold!

This is the part where I start expressing how angry I am right?

WRONG! You see as much as the situation made me laugh, I'm actually very happy with this development*. I have a bunch of hunches and half-baked theories bouncing around my head most of the time. The one currently using up the most brain cycles is:

"Many Testers care so much about quality, that they're leaving Testing."

Testers Career Growth

The lifecycle looks like this.

At the start of our testing careers, we focus on interacting with the product to learn as much about it as we possibly can. But before too long we wind up saying and feeling things like:

This would be easier if I could use production data whenever I wanted
We'd save way more time if the user stories weren't so vague
If I could test locally, I wouldn't need to use the shared test environment so much
If we'd known about our dependency on that team, we could have done something about it

...and so on and so on!

Or to put it another way:

Alt: Image describing testing career growth

Beginner: Find the bugs yourself.
Intermediate: Use tools to find the bugs.
Advanced: Build tools to find the bugs.
Master: Influence the system to prevent the bugs.

All of those things are about increasing the leverage and impact of testing activities. I like to call it "getting access to the levers"** and it's hideous draining work in particular orgs. You feel like you're bending this way and that, sneaking, fighting, persuading, and negotiating to get things your teammates take for granted.

All of this is Glue Work***, and Glue Work is Technical Leadership.

So folks leave testing and move into positions like SRE, Dev, Data, Product****, because you don't have to spend 99% of your time persuading people to take you seriously. You're already seen as a Technical Leader by default.

But why am I bringing all this up?

I've been given access to the levers!

Or some of them at least!

Maybe not all of them. And maybe not all of the time. But it's way more access than I had two weeks ago! What's more, being voluntold is actually an important and positive signal i.e. Despite my job title being "Quality Engineer"***** someone thinks I have the right stuff to be successful in this role.

In other words, at least by some people some of the time, I'm seen as a Technical Leader.

WIN!

Now I have access to these levers, what the bloody hell do I do with them?!

It's time to figure this Product Management thing out!

I believe I have some existing overlapping skills that make me a good fit for the role. Things like active listening, systems thinking, diplomacy, an exposure to sales and marketing, and the ability to ask good questions.

But no doubt there are gaps too.

Here are some things I'll be doing and resources I'll be consuming to fill them in:

Shadow my teammates. My teammates are bonkers, particularly my QE peers. I feel like Ant-Man in The Avengers! One teammate in particular (Hey Sunitha 👋🏾) is doing similar work to what I've described above, so I plan on watching her closely and taking copious notes in the days and weeks ahead!
Binge John Cutler. If it has John Cutler's name on it, I'm reading it, listening to it, practising it, and watching it. I will John Cutler allTheThings! First step is his Scoping and Shaping for Success course, and then I'll gorge myself on his newsletter.
Study my ass off. Jez Humble has put this wonderful resource together to support a course he was/is involved in at UC Berkeley.
Get my hands dirty. I'm strongly biased towards understanding what I'm doing before I do it. Not a bad trait, if you know when to stop theorising and start doing. Which I don't! Luckily the nature of the team means I won't think be able to stay in research mode indefinitely.

Final thoughts

This has triggered a ton of thoughts that I'll be exploring further.

Why do Testers have such terrible marketing?!
How come Testers are expected to fix the organisation before doing their jobs******
What are leaders in positions like Engineering Manager, VP of X, CxO, etc missing out on by neglecting the Testing Experts in their teams?
...and how do I communicate that to them?
What's stopping these leaders from giving the Testing Experts in their lives more TLC?
...and how do I help them start?
What could (and should!) you & I do as a Testing Specialist to alleviate all this?

Stay tuned.

* and it makes for a great story too I hope 😊

** Ioana Serban has an INCREDIBLE talk about this topic and explains her experience "getting the keys to the test environment". Stop reading this right now and go watch it please!

*** I'm going to create a quick brain dump with allTheThings I've said about Glue Work. Standby!

**** Even worse they leave tech all together sometimes 😢

***** And not just any QE either. I'm a Senior Expert Quality Engineer thank you very bloody much! Jokes aside think of it like a Head of Quality but in an IC role.

****** I'm totally coming back to this topic soon. I'll link here when I do.

How I Was Tricked Into Being The PO For My Team And Why I'm Happy About It

The one about becoming what I like to call the "Acting Interim Part-Time PO" and why this is fantastic!

What will you write today?