Everything sacred is a tie, a fetter.
— Max Stirner

I am an irreverent guy. I’m a fan of South Park and QA Hates You, for example. Furthermore, I think it’s important–nay, essential–for software testers to cultivate a healthy irreverence. Nothing should be beyond question or scrutiny. “Respecting” something as “off limits” (also known as dogmatism) is bound to lead to unexamined assumptions, which in turn can lead to missed bugs and lower quality software. If anything, I think testers should consider themselves akin to the licensed fools of the royal court: Able–and encouraged–to call things as they see them and, especially, to question authority.

Contrast that with arrogance–an attitude often confused with irreverence. The distinction between them may be subtle, but it is key. Irreverence and humility are not mutually exclusive, whereas arrogance involves a feeling of smug superiority; a sense that one is “right.” Arrogance thus contains a healthy dose of dogmatism. The irreverent, on the other hand, are comfortable with the possibility that they’re wrong. They question all beliefs, including their own. The arrogant only question the beliefs of others.

I pride myself (yes, I am being intentionally ironic, here) on knowing this difference. So, it pains me to share the following email with you. It’s an embarrassing example of a moment when I completely failed to keep the distinction in mind. Worse, I had to re-read it several times before I could finally see that my tone was indeed arrogant, not irreverent, as I intended it. I’ll spare you my explanations and rationalizations about how and why this happened (though I have a bunch, believe me!).

The email–reproduced here unmodified except for some re-arranging, to improve clarity–was meant only for the QA team, not the 3rd-party developer of the system. In a comedy of errors and laziness it ended up being sent to them anyway. Sadly, I think its tone ensured that none of the ideas for improvements were implemented.

After you’ve read the email, I invite you to share any thoughts you have about why it crosses the line from irreverence into arrogance. Naked taunts are probably appropriate, too. On the other hand, maybe you’ll want to tell me I’m wrong. It really isn’t arrogant! I won’t hold my breath.

Do you have any stories of your own where you crossed the line and regretted it later?

The user interface for OEP has lots of room for improvement (I’m trying to be kind).

Below are some of my immediate thoughts while looking at the OEP UI for the front page. (I’ll save thoughts on the other pages for later)

1. Why does the Order Reference Number field not allow wildcards? I think it should, especially since ORNs are such long numbers.

2. Why can you not simply click a date and see the orders created on that date? The search requires additional parameters. Why? (Especially if the ORN field doesn’t allow wildcards!)

3. Why, when I click a date in the calendar, does the entire screen refresh, but a search doesn’t actually happen? I have to click the Search button. This is inconsistent with the way the Process Queue drop down works. There, when I select a new queue, it shows me that instantly. I don’t have to click the “Get Orders” button.

5. What does “Contact Name” refer to? When is anyone going to search by “Contact Name”? I don’t even know what a Contact Name is! Is it the patient? Is it the OEP user???

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4. In fact, I *never* have to click the Get Orders button. Why is it even there on the screen?

6. Why waste screen space with a “Select” column (with the word “Select” repeated over and over again–this is UGLY) when you could eliminate that column and make the Order Reference number clickable? That would conserve screen space.

7. Why does OEP restrict the display list to only 10 items? It would be better if it allowed longer lists, so that there wouldn’t need to be so much searching around.

8. Why are there “View Notes” links for every item, when most items don’t have any notes associated with them? It seems like the View Notes link should only appear for those records that actually have notes.

9. Same question as above, for “Show History Records”.

10. Also, why is it “Show History Records” instead of just “History”, which would be more elegant, given the width of the column?

11. Speaking of that, why not just have “History” and “Notes” as the column headers, and pleasant icons in those rows where History or Notes exist? That would be much more pleasing to the eye.

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12. In the History section, you have a “Record Comment” column and an “Action Performed” column. You’ll notice that there is NEVER a situation where the “Action Performed” column shows any useful information beyond what you can read in the “Record Comment” field. Why include something on the screen if it’s not going to provide useful information to the user?

For example:

Record Comment: Order checked out by user -TSIAdmin-
Action Performed: CheckOut

That is redundant information.

In addition to that, in this example the Record Create User ID field says “TSIAdmin”. That’s more redundant information.

There must be some other useful information that can be put on this screen.

13. Why does the History list restrict the display to only 5 items? Why not 20 items? Why not give the user the option to “display all on one page”?

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14. In Notes section of the screen, the column widths seem wrong. The Date and User ID columns are very wide, leaving lots of white space on the screen.