For the last couple of weeks, I've been head down, fully focused, on a specific testing deliverable. I've been starting extra early to get time when my testing doesn't impact anyone else, as well as to compensate for the impact to my efficiency that working with only one monitor has caused.
And I felt quite internally rewarded when I finished early and was able to pick up some of my peers work to help them complete their tests. As a team we finished ahead of schedule. That always makes me happy.
And that's where effectiveness comes in. Because today I discovered that none of the test we completed were technically valid. The spec was missing a key point, and the data from which we validated our results was not the correct data. So I saw two weeks of very hard work go down the drain.
Luckily, for my tests, I had recorded all my data, which allowed me to go back and quickly validate the tests against the right data elements. In the case of my peers tests, that wasn't an option since they hadn't saved all the data.
We are often told today that business has to seek 'good enough'. There isn't enough time to do things right. The agile business accepts 'good enough' as the price of being agile. Indeed there are those who laud 'good enough' as a virtue rather than a vice.
That may be true, but today was a lesson for me in the effectiveness of doing things right.
