Previously on A Knowledge Worker’s Tale: A large bottleneck appeared in the exploratory test column of team X’s kanban board, but only Rick and Jane, the testers, seemed to give a damn about it working hard to unblock it. Gus saw the problem asked the team to take off their headphones, go to a room and get instructions from the testers on how to unblock the flow of work.

And the story continues…

Team Xers reappeared in their open space with renewed energy. Rick and Jane had explained what they needed to get their work unblocked and soon people started working in pairs. Rick and Peter were debugging together an issue that seemed difficult to track with the assistance of Fritz the business analyst that seemed positive he remembered something important that could help them. Jane was showing to Mike and Jimmy how, what she thought was the correct customer journey, was not what Zach the customer thought it was.

It was great to watch, a group of skilled professionals working in groups, using all their skills and knowledge to troubleshoot a complex problem.

As expected, the pairing and collaboration gave its fruits, defects were getting fixed and retested and the bottleneck was reducing fast. Flow was being reestablished thanks to the team swarming and focusing on the biggest problem in the system, it was great to observe.

Once things got back to normal Mike called the team to the board and said “Folks, it has taken only 3 hours to fix that bottleneck that had basically stopped our flow for two days, I think we have learned a very big lesson today and the lesson is that when we see a bottleneck, we all have to chip in and help unblock it!”. The other guys nodded with satisfied faces finally seeing their work getting to completion again. “Well done all!” Rick the tester added “without your help, we would still be where we were 3 hours ago, collaborating has been fantastic” and the lads gave themselves a small round of applause.

“Let’s go back to work!” said Mike.

“Hang on, hang on” intervened Gus, that had been lurking from distance. “It is great that you guys found a way to reestablish flow, I was delighted to see how you collaborated and forgot about your roles for the good of the customer, I say well done for that”. He continued “The fact is, if we go back to work without addressing the problem that created the bottleneck in the first place, it will be only a matter of time before it happens again, don’t you agree? Now that we have it fresh in mind, I suggest we try to understand the real problem that created the bottleneck, let’s do a quick retro, who’s with me?” The team nodded and followed Gus in the retrospective room.

“So WHY do you guys think the bottleneck formed at exploratory testing?” asked Gus. Immediately Peter jumped in “Because we need more testers!” to which some of the other team members nodded in unison. He added, “Rick and Jane are always super busy, they never have a minute free and at the same time they are always behind with work, the guys need help, we need more testers!”

“Adding more testers is a potential solution, but we haven’t identified the problem yet” said Gus. “I am going to ask a tester now, Jane, WHY do you think the bottleneck formed at exploratory testing?” Jane, slightly caught by surprise turns to Rick, mutters something, then says “Because exploratory testing was taking too long”. “Ok this sounds like a reasonable problem, and WHY was it taking too long?” added Gus. “Well, running tests would have been fast, but we found a lot of defects that needed fixing and that created a never ending back and forth with the developers and Zach” added Jane.

“Very good Jane, thank you, we are getting somewhere now” said Gus, and continued “so it appears we had too many defects in the stories you were testing, so WHY were we having so many defects?”. A long silence ensued.

Peter broke the silence and said “For my user story, it turns out I didn’t understand clearly what Zach (the customer) wanted, so I had to change it four times”. Jimmy added “Yes, the same for me, this feature is complex and the work me and Mike were doing had to be changed many times, every time Jane or Rick would find something wrong because they’d ask Zach and he changed his mind, yet again”

Gus smiled and went “Oh Oh Oh, I think we might be getting somewhere here folks, what do you think Mike?” Mike was deep in thought, head down. He stood up and said loudly “I get it! It looks like a communication problem early in the process presented itself as a visible problem in exploratory testing. It’s got nothing to do with testing!” He was truly excited by the revelation, then he added “The root cause of the problem is the bad communication between the team and the customer and the symptom shows up in exploratory testing.”

Gus said “That’s an excellent observation Mike, do you guys think that if you clarified your doubts with the customer before you started working you would have saved the time you have spent reworking?” Everybody in unison went “Yeah!”. Well, now we know what the real problem is, I’ll chat to you tomorrow morning at the stand-up and we’ll find a solution together, it’s getting late now. Great work everybody and well done for getting to the root of the problem with only four why’s, I normally need five…”

Gus stood up to leave but stopped mid-track and asked “Guys, so do we still think we need more testers?” Peter was first to answer “No Gus, you’re right that was a knee-jerk reaction, thinking about it ,we need more clarity, not testers”

Asking why enough times to get to the root cause of a problem is a great technique, thought Gus while leaving the office and heading to the pub.

Stay tuned and find out what happens next!

The next episode is out, find out how they will resolve the problem!