During a conversation recently, I found myself trying to explain this concept I commonly refer to as “Alpha Tester” and he mentioned that it might make a good blog post… so here I am.
The term alpha can mean so many things especially within the realm of software. I am using alpha to mean: “socially dominant especially in a group of animals” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/alpha ).
In my experience as a software tester, I was frequently on a cross functional project team where I was the only tester. I had input from other testers, but I decided what to do with that information. I could decide to update MY test plan based on feedback or I could decide to list something as out of scope, etc. This all worked quite well and I applauded myself for being so open to feedback. How great, right?
Then came the times when another tester was added to help or another tester’s team overlapped with something I owned. I became defensive, easy to anger and my general attitude changed until the project was complete… then back to my way.
It took me much of my career to really see this behavior and understand what was being triggered and why. Here is what I learned as I look back at this:
Sharing workload, responsibilities, ideas is not a sign of your own weakness or inadequacy… quite the opposite. Actually listening to other people’s ideas can have amazing results.
If you approach someone’s ideas defensively, you won’t learn.
If you are too aggressive in order to shut out great ideas, you won’t learn.
Take a minute and try to determine what is it about this new dynamic that makes you uncomfortable, defensive, angry?Is it the person, situation or something else entirely?
Communicate your needs and expectations on the project up front. Make sure you identify and communicate what is important to YOU. What do you feel comfortable dividing up? Will one person be point? Will everything be shared? How will status be communicated?
You don’t need to know everything and pretending that you do know all the things makes you lose the opportunity to learn some really cool new things.
Be kind to yourself.
Be kind to the people trying to help you. They might not want to be sharing either :-)
This is a simplistic view, because humans and situations are complicated but it’s a place to start.