You know sometimes you just need to rant.  I was reminded of King Midas’ barber and Midas’ donkey ears today

From Wikipedia:

“Once Pan had the audacity to compare his music with that of Apollo, and to challenge Apollo, the god of the lyre, to a trial of skill (also see Marsyas). Tmolus, the mountain-god, was chosen as umpire. Pan blew on his pipes, and with his rustic melody gave great satisfaction to himself and his faithful follower, Midas, who happened to be present.

Then Apollo struck the strings of his lyre. Tmolus at once awarded the victory to Apollo, and all but Midas agreed with the judgment. He dissented, and questioned the justice of the award.

Apollo would not suffer such a depraved pair of ears any longer, and caused them to become the ears of a donkey.^[15] The myth is illustrated by two paintings "Apollo and Marsyas" by Palma il Giovane (1544-1628), one depicting the scene before, and one after the punishment.

Midas was mortified at this mishap. He attempted to hide his misfortune with an ample turban or headdress. But his hairdresser of course knew the secret. He was told not to mention it. He could not keep the secret; so he went out into the meadow, dug a hole in the ground, whispered the story into it, and covered the hole up. A thick bed of reeds sprang up in the meadow, and began whispering the story and saying "King Midas has a donkey's ears."

Today I feel like King Midas’ barber – I can’t keep this in any longer.

Something that really makes me cross is when so-called industry experts believe that they know better than you how to solve your problems.  You see it in response to questions in forums, you see it in people’s blogs, you hear it at conferences and you hear it in conversations.

An example:  I was at a conference and in the evening got into a conversation with one of the speakers.  This speaker (who I will not name) is well known in the testing world, has written articles and books, teaches and speaks and is well respected.  We talked a bit about generalities of testing and then got talking about what I was doing and his only retort was “I’ll give you my card, I would sort it out”.  How could he possibly know he could sort it out?  Why did he think he could do a better job than I could?  He didn’t know what the context was, the constraints or anything about the project.  The arrogance just stunned me and I couldn’t think of a suitable response. 

My particular problems are split into a number of categories:

1)      Those that are imposed as constraints on me from higher up.  Things like the project’s budget, company policy.  I can’t solve those, I have to live with them and make the best of them.

2)      Those that are caused by the project methodology.  The project uses a Prince 2-like methodology, which means that there are some things you just have to do.  Whether you think Prince 2 is good, bad or indifferent is irrelevant, as with any methodology, problems are caused by it.  Some I can work around, some I can’t.

3)      Those that are caused by people working on the project but not in the test team.  They have their own priorities, ways of working, constraints, etc.  Some of those may cause me problems.  Some I can resolve, some I can’t.

4)      Those that are caused by people within the test team.  These are totally within my control and I can work towards resolving them (e.g. skills gaps).

5)      Those that are caused by me.  Much as it pains me to admit it, I am not perfect and I cause some of my own problems.  I try to work towards self-improvement, but perfection is probably about 300 years away.

I am sure that I am not the only one with this set of problems.  I am glad there are problems; otherwise I would be out of a job!

I don’t believe that any one person can solve all of these problems for me.  I most definitely believe that anyone could come into the project with no knowledge of its history, culture, methods and sort out my problems.  If I had a free hand, had a lot of time and a lot of money I might, just might, be able to solve some of the problems this project has, but that is not going to happen.

I ask for help, advice, like most people.  I am not afraid to listen to people who have tried things and found them to work.  I have tried some of these methods, some have worked, some haven’t, but no-one, I repeat, no-one, could tell me how to sort out the problems I have.  

So my plea to the experts is “Don’t tell me you would know how to solve a problem, give me pointers to how I can solve the problem”

Finally, here is a counter-example to the one I gave above.

I spoke to Johanna Rothman at a conference and asked her a question which was related to the talk she had just given.  She did not give me the answer, nor tell me how to solve it.  What she did was ask me questions about the problem and made a couple of suggestions of how I might approach solving the problem.  It was wonderful, I was able to take that away and work on solving the problem myself.

Rant over. The reeds have finished their story and can now die.