In a little less than a months time, I’ll be speaking at Ministry of Testing Athens meetup on the beach about “how raising quality (good) bug cards prepares you for becoming a Quality (test) leader”.
What I mean by this, is that all testing professionals learn how to raise effective bug cards that can communicate bad news. I think, this is something that Software Engineering (dev) leaders don’t have the same experiences with, because every bug represents some sort of issue, defect or fault in the system under test that needs to be addressed (which is bad news or feedback for the team).
I think there are multiple aspects to raising good feedback and ensuring it is followed, that raising effective bug cards - that persuade product owners and developers to prioritise bugs - teaches us, and helps our careers as we gain more leadership experience. I’m a Principal Test Engineer, so I don’t just mean line management and traditional team leadership but also the ability to influence your team and manage expectations.
How I’d like your help…
Please share your stories about a time that you received some “bad” or ineffective feedback during your career.
I’m looking for examples that left you with a confused expression that maybe you were unsure why a colleague was telling you that - or you weren’t sure of what you were meant to do with that feedback. I’d like to share my model and reframe how that feedback could have been more effective.
Please share your stories about a time that you gave some feedback but you weren’t sure if the person had acted on your advice.
I’m looking for examples of miscommunications, so that I can share my model for providing feedback and perhaps iterate on the feedback you gave and ensure you can follow up.
Please share your stories about a time that feedback was given in a productive way, that made future experiences better.
I’m looking for success stories of feedback that’s been given and received well.
Thank you!
Please note if you’d be happy to provide examples but don’t wish to reply publicly, I can be contacted on the Ministry of Testing Slack.
So, in one of my previous organizations, during the annual appraisal feedback meeting, I received a feedback that I should work on my communication with developers. Along with that, they also mentioned I should show more patience while handling things. Now, this feedback honestly came as a surprise to me because I was the one who was constantly communicating with everyone, going back and forth between PMs, EMs, leads, and other team members. Yet somehow, I ended up with this feedback.
And the next part of the feedback it confused me even more. Whatever task I assign to anyone, I always make sure to include buffer time in deadlines from my end, just so others don’t feel unnecessary pressure. Despite putting in that effort, I received such feedback. For me, it didn’t feel like harsh criticism, more like unexpected feedback. Even now, I’m not quite sure what exactly I was supposed to improve.
In my last organization, one of the feedback while giving presentation on POC was from my lead who suggested me to take a pause at regular interval and wait for the audience to grasp the content i spoke and let them ask the doubt they have in their mind. I think for me that was one of the positive feedback which change the way i gave presentation and spoke.
There was a thread in a teams channel around when I first started at my company. There were a lot of questions around an area of the business and it was a bunch of new people and this ‘mentor’ chimed in with a “Well it’s obviously this way.” Like no, if it was that obvious there wouldn’t be a bunch of people talking about it.
Also why as a mentor do you think it’s good to come in like that instead of walking through. He wasn’t with the company long after that as I think a bunch of new people complained that he just made them feel dumb or not helpful.
I had a new manager who had ruffled a few feathers but created an opportunity for a Lead Test Automation Engineer which I applied for. So I applied for it and interviewed, but didn’t get the role and my current lead got it which I was fine with. However, the feedback I got was “You sent me email with a progress report. You could have just told me”… nothing about my experience or reasons why I wasn’t the right person - all down to sending an email. I kind of figured out that there was something else going on here that I was happy not to be involved in…but thats another story
I had a QE in the team who often had to be lead to tasks but also wanted to be promoted to a Senior due to his length of service. I said to them that to take that extra responsibility, they needed to show they could prioritise and collaborate themselves i.e. show more leadership. There wasn’t really any change in behaviour and I wasn’t sure how else to put it.
I was (and still am) a passionate and opinionated quality leader. But I used to get quite frustrated if I could see particular quality issues coming that I thought were common sense but none of my peer leaders could see them. So I often felt I had to hammer my point home so that it would be understood.
My leader at the time did say I needed to approach these things differently and separate the frustration/venting from looking for different ways to be understood - because most of the time my concerns were valid but forcing the issue would switch people to be even more defensive. If I needed to just vent and let off steam, talking to them is a safe space and we can figure out next steps if I’m stuck. Of course they were right, so I continue today to try and manage my approach to giving quality feedback and not just “go off on one” if its met with indifference.
No problem hopefully thats what you were looking for. I had a mini panic over the weekend that my examples were too leadership as I’m writing an article around that and have been thinking about nothing else . So if you need more day to day examples let me know.
Back at my first job in testing (at a consultancy), I was put on a project with two colleagues where we were testing some mobile app.
The client we were working with only communicated with one of the three of us directly and all information was relayed through them to the other two (very bizarre setup, looking back).
Eventually, one of my colleagues was moved onto a different project and my other colleague became the one that would communicate with the client directly.
So one day, we did some testing for them and submitted it but the client was unhappy with the work; claiming we missed loads of things that we shouldn’t have.
The only thing is, they didn’t really specify who made the mistake and blamed both of us. This lead to me being taken aside by both my colleague and the account manager who both berated me for making this mistake (this is despite the fact that my colleague could easily have also been at fault for this).
Later that same day, I was removed from the project.
Initially, I looked at that situation and took the lesson “I should take more care in future” but looking at it now, it’s really about blame culture. They didn’t really help me out in that situation or give me an solutions to avoid it in future. It was easier to throw me under the bus.
Maybe this is more of a story of no feedback rather than bad feedback but I hope it helps.
nothing about my experience or reasons why I wasn’t the right person - all down to sending an email. I kind of figured out that there was something else going on here that I was happy not to be involved in…but thats another story 
. So if you need more day to day examples let me know.