Runnin’ the show
Some will have noticed that I tweeted some Dick DeVenzio quotes during the last days:
“What is said and what is meant and what is understood can be three very different things.” Dick DeVenzio
— Christian Kram (@chr_kram) 19. Januar 2015
“If you are doing all things yourself or not getting them done at all, you are not delegating enough responsibility.” Dick DeVenzio
— Christian Kram (@chr_kram) 20. Januar 2015
Both are from a book called “Runnin’ the show” by Dick DeVenzio. It is actually a book for basketball coaches and some extents players as well. This one is not about X and Os, conditioning or plays. It is a book about leadership. I own this for a few years now and some of the things proposed have actually become part of my coaching habits. So you could say that it has been kind of influential to me. I just re-read it, but this time more from a tester’s point of view. And I was very surprised how many things could easily be related to testing or team leadership in general. If the first quote above doesn’t literally shout requirements engineering, then I don’t know.
The book itself is divided into 4 sections:
- DeVenzio’s personal background and experiences concerning leadership
- his advices for coaches
- his advices for players
- and personal evaluation
Especially the first two chapters are splendid. The quotes above are just two examples, there is much more on basketball being a game of mistakes (so is testing), assigning duties, group composition and understanding of roles. A recurrent theme is communication. There is a chapter about it, but the book simply shouts “Communicate properly!” most everywhere. Don’t just let your work speak for you, speak for yourself and promote your ideas is just one of the communication aspects mentioned. The section on personal evaluation is rather short, but topics like concentration, systematic improvement, curiosity or enthusiasm to just name a few, are often among required soft skills for testers as well.
I don’t agree with everything and not everything is applicable in an office environment, though it might be really funny to have a dev team running suicides for giving wrong answers (I said run suicides! In case you never did it, it looks like this).
I strongly recommend this little gem. These are 10 bucks well spend!
