InfoWorld has an all-too-familiar story about mismatched expectations: "Working for Dilbert's Boss":
I’m the software QA manager at an enterprise application development company -- and all my boss needs is pointy hair and an Etch A Sketch for a computer to be a direct replacement for Dilbert’s boss. A few months ago, he calls me into his office and asks how long a particularly large project will take to run through a complete QA test-fix-and-verify cycle.
After I check with my technical development manager, we ask for three months. Given the sense of urgency I’m getting from my boss, that estimate already assumes 10-hour days and working weekends...
OK, I’m used to this drill. I make it clear to my boss that if I’m only getting three weeks to test it, the product will inevitably ship with bugs. He doesn’t care. “Just test the parts most people will see,” he says. (I swear he actually said that one as well.) So my team kills itself working 90-hour weeks, trying to give a good hit on all modules, while we’re literally sleeping in our cars and cubes. Amazingly, we actually ship the thing on time. Considering the time crunch and the corners we had to cut to meet the date, the app is in surprisingly good shape.
One week later, my boss discovers a minor cosmetic bug deep in the bowels of the thing. He stomps into my cube and starts screaming at me: “How could you have let this slip through?” he yells. “What’s wrong with your QA procedures?”
We've all been there at one point or another, dealing with a failure to manage expectations. The QA department often gets the worst of it, since it's all-tto-frequently perceived as an "end-of-pipe" procedure as opposed to a set of business processes that should be factored into the schedule and deliverables from the start.
I recall working with a terrific QA manager who went to great lengths to raise everyone's awareness, especially in regard to what was and wasn't doable within a given release time-frame. First she would lay out how much time was required based on the expected number of test/fix cycles. If the schedule was tight, and cycles were going to be limited, she would list where corners would have to be cut. Marketing, development and other stakeholders then signed off.
In essence, she was saying, "If I am going to be held accountable for the quality of the deliverable, I will document what I am able to deliver within the targeted timeframe." Then she did her best to overdeliver within the constraints of the schedule. All in all, very much in lin with the way the QA manager above tried to handle things. But even the best laid plans can still go south, especially if your boss happens to be that pointy-haired guy.
