It's late so this will be short.

My class today was really fun. We were talking through the planning and development phases of a project, so we watched an entertaining video about XP development and testing and then attempted to build a "product" for our customer (the instructor) using playing cards and tape. Not only did our product fail, we also forgot to follow all the rules we had learned over the last three days. That was the point of the exercise, to show you how easy it was to overlook good change control, risk management, etc. We had a lot of fun failing too. I have one more day of class, part of which I have to miss since I have to lead a meeting in the late morning.

I had my weekly one-on-one with my manager. I tell him interesting things about what I'm doing (he doesn't want to hear the details) and then he asks me penetrating questions that get me thinking about how I can do better. I'm sure I get more out of the meetings than he does.

While I'm not the world's greatest expert on testing (my peer is an expert), I've managed to stumble into some interesting areas. The best is building a relationship between my group and the group that directs testing for "the business."

Who is "the business?" During my first couple of months I would hear people say things like "Oh, he's from the business." I had no idea what that meant but I was sure that everyone else knew. I knew I was in Technology, but isn't technology part of the business? I tried asking people about "the business" but people in Tech were evasive and people in the business would say "Well, I'm in the business" and stop there which told me absolutely nothing.

I finally felt better when, at my Friday quality meeting, a fifteen year company veteran looked a guy from "the business" right in the eye and asked "Just who do you mean when you say the business?" He was surprised, stammered a little, then reeled off a list of groups that sounded businessy. There was a collective "Oh, I see" in the room. Just another workplace mystery solved.