It was a post lunch session and I was one of the reviewers in the table review with the development team. The purpose of the activity was to find out how a bug escaped our development and testing process and reached the customer and also to find out means to prevent them in future.
My 11 Year Old's Observation
We reviewed the 5 why analysis done and discussed in detail about the bug that slipped. When the meeting was over, my 11 year old who was keenly observing the conversations told me, "I will never enter the corporate world". I asked her, "Why?". "You are making developers feel guilty for a bug that slipped. They are already guilty. Why do you ask so many 'whys' to them? Imagine how they would have felt."
Paradigm Shift
Suddenly I could feel the heat on the other side of the table. How much offended they would have felt, that they even become defensive at times. They put their heart and soul into the feature. A customer bug would have pierced their heart and this exercise would have hurt them more.
Purpose
However the purpose of this activity is not to blame a team or a person, but to come up with innovative methods to prevent similar issues in future. Continuous improvement is not only applicable for software development, but for everything under the sky. It is the only way to keep up the quality. Innovation and improvement are the keys to quality and success.
Taking the Developer's Side
But wasn't it my duty to make the developer feel at ease and explain the purpose? When my 11 year old could empathize with the developer, why didn't I? The reason is that, my daughter is a recent developer herself and it has been a long time since I was a developer. She would always request me to test her coding projects, and a bug in her project is the last thing she would want to hear from me. :)
Lessons Learnt
Finally I learnt these precious lessons from my 11 year old. "Understanding the purpose of an exercise by all involved parties is more important than performing the exercise itself. Also, empathizing with our colleagues is an important trait to master while working in a team, to get the best results."
Later, I explained to her the purpose of this activity and told her that this is not specific to corporates. I went ahead and told her that 'Continuous improvement' is applicable for everything under the sky.
I am not sure if my little one ("What?? I am almost a teenager and you call me your little one?" lol) agreed with me, but I definitely learnt a lot from her :)
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