Office Politics

Isn't it strange how when working within a company, everyone should be working together and separate teams should be effectively communicating, they just DON'T. I think a key issue here is office politics and this is within testing as much as any other area.

What relevance is this? you might be thinking.

My day began with fireworks over what team should be testing a piece of work and ended with finger pointing over who was responsible for the test environment when not enough resources have been scheduled for adequate resource.

To me it stresses that approach is everything when dealing with issues and that the power of talking to someone face to face should never be under estimated. If the communication initially had taken place sat around a table and been recorded then the responsibility in both cases would have been clearly laid out.

To deal with office politics and different team agendas
1/ Get everyone (especially those that have differing approaches) around the table in a meeting.
2/ Make it clear to all of the people attending what will be discussed and what is expected by the end of the meeting.
3/ Ensure that everyone agrees the way forward and that this approach is minuted and issued at the end to all attendes.

Once completed then by definition someone has assumed responsibility for this. Later in the process there should not then be any contention over resourcing etc. For these issues the documents production and agreement is essential as this ensures that everyone is clear of their responsibility.