Telling Our Story
Telling Our Story
Software professionals learn a lot from technical presentations and articles. But sometimes a well-told story can illustrate technical concepts even better, in an entertaining and memorable way. This week, Lee Copeland tells why it's good to be a software bard, teaching your audiences hard concepts in a decidedly nontechnical way.
I am a storyteller.
If you've ever attended a class that I've taught or a presentation that I've made, you've probably heard some of my stories. Many of you know that I once hired an architect and together we designed a house. I was very anxious to dig a hole in the ground while my architect wisely sought to understand my family's needs and only then design a home for us. For years I've told clients to be patient-let's understand your needs first, then we can more effectively design a system to meet them. Don't be in such a hurry to begin writing code. But when I became the client, I fell into the trap that I had always warned others about.
Here's another one. A few weeks ago I was on a flight from Salt Lake City to Detroit. Something was broken in the cockpit, the glide-slope computer, whatever that is. It must be important because the pilots and mechanics seemed to be very intent on fixing it. After replacing the computer a couple of times it still didn't work. The pilot announced on the intercom that he was shutting down all the power in the plane and then turning it on again to see if that helped. And then he added, "It's like pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete on your computer at home." Most passengers laughed. The software testers on board blanched with fear.
It's stories like this that I use in my presentations for two reasons. First, I believe that nontechnical stories can be used effectively to explain, illustrate, and even illuminate complex technical material. Second, I think sometimes our brains just need a respite from the onslaught of formal instruction.
Recently my wife returned from a conference of social workers. As usual, she brought home an armload of books which, as is her custom, she dropped on the floor in our bedroom near her comfy chair. One of the books was titled The Power of Personal Storytelling by Jack Maguire.
In it Maguire says, "The process of becoming a storyteller involves trying out a conscientious slowdown in our minds, traveling at our own leisurely pace, not only to get where we want to go, but also to make the getting there better." He's right-stories get us there better. Maguire gives us other reasons to be storytellers: Storytelling connects us more vitally with others, it develops our creativity, it strengthens our humor, it increases our courage and confidence, and ultimately it invests our lives with more meaning.
As software testers, we have a story to tell, a vital story-a story about risk, a story about quality, a story about improvement, a story about success. Too often we present our story in purely technical terms: defect density, defect removal rate, defect severity, defect age, expected loss, return on investment. Perhaps our story can be better told through other stories-stories that, while illustrating technical points, also trigger fresh ways of thinking, encourage and inspire creativity, offer innovative points of view, and perhaps just put people in a better frame of mind.
I hope you'll discover for yourself the power and joy of storytelling. What personal stories, like my house-building example, do you have to illustrate a technical point in a different way? Give it a try.
Comments
#1 Submitted by SuZ Garcia on Tue, 07/09/2002 - 3:31pm.
Also see the book "The Springboard Story" for a story about using storytelling to bring knowledge management into the World Bank Organization....includes dissecting different story types for different purposes, very useful for the sotryteller!
#2 Submitted by Danny R. Faught on Tue, 07/09/2002 - 2:02pm.
This reminds me of a step further that you can take with your training - experiential exercises. I was reminded of this technique when I participated in Jerry Weinberg's Problem-Solving Leadership course. We were building a house of cards, solving puzzles, and eventually creating exercises of our own. The most memorable type of story is the one the participants write themselves.I'm trying to figure out how to create experiential exercises for training testers. Has anyone been to a technical training course where the intructor had you up out of your seats and acting out what you were learning?
#3 Submitted by Ivor McCormack on Tue, 07/09/2002 - 11:35am.
While I agree wholeheartedly with the premise of story telling, it was after all the original Knowledge Management solution, it can have a teensie wee drawback. You could, if you fall into the trap, become known as a rambler. The old guy, laidback, warhorse or worse, disruptive. People may build a vision of you sitting in an armchair, with your wooly sweater, smoking your pipe and reminicing if you are not careful.I like structure and process to a certain degree. It provides guidance and helps ensure we are all reading off the same script. To that end one of the most useful ways I saw of building a story for selling an idea, issue or product came out of Mike Bosworth's book "Solution Selling - Creating buyers in difficult selling markets". He proposes a template and provides guidance on how to build a Reference Story, allowing the user to build in the necessary facts while making it appear anecdotal.I love a good story, I'm Irish, its in my blood. If you are going to adopt this way of getting a message across, make sure you construct it carefully and practice its delivery. Improv only works in the Comedy Cellar.Ivor McCormack
#4 Submitted by Yogita Sahoo on Tue, 07/09/2002 - 3:22am.
Good points to take note of ! Stories help one connect to reality in a better and constructive manner. But story telling may prove to be a useless effort, if your story lacks dynamics and movement. Moreover the purpose should be clear, straight and simple. After all, the whole idea behind the story is to push its intent to the audience. It's also of critical importance that a story concludes the subject properly. It should be well in the mind of a storyteller (tester) that his audiences are technical people. So a very simplified story would not help. Try to show the connection it has with their work and the product they intend to make. Help them relate to your story.
#5 Submitted by Robert E. Lee on Mon, 07/08/2002 - 7:01pm.
Great article, Lee. One reason that story telling works so well is that emotion helps us remember - things that don't raise our emotions must not have been worth remembering, biologically. So cold equations don't stick as easily as a story that "grabs us." That's also why ads on TV try so hard to stir emotions - they want to be remembered rather than filtered. Bob Lee
#6 Submitted by Srinivasan Desikan on Sat, 07/13/2002 - 10:59am.
I completely agree!. I have been doing induction training for my companies for the last 7-8 years and always found stories help a lot to communicate the points. However i found it difficult in international conferences where you are given only 30-45 min, the story telling becomes difficult, in which case some well known jokes (eg Dilbert) will come in handy. I tried this and was well accepted by audience. My two cents,
#7 Submitted by Erik Petersen on Wed, 07/10/2002 - 11:22am.
There may be power in telling stories, but there is no joy in this tale of the realities of risk. Yesterday, I'm taking my 8 year old son to see the new Star Wars film, and I stop on the way at my local ATM for some cash. All the spots in the side street are taken so I park (for the first time!) in a loading zone, then cross the road, round a corner, wait for the woman in front of me to dither her way through her transaction, then I jump in, only to find that I have to change my amount because the machine is out of $20s, then I grab my card, money and receipt and go back around the corner to the car. Looking up from putting the money in my wallet, I see some guy in a uniform is putting something under my windscreen wipers, watched wide eyed by my son in the car.There must only be a handful of parking officers to patrol a huge area of many many square miles, and one of them catches me in my minute and a half of parking! I've used this ATM hundreds of times, and hardly ever had to queue and I've never known it to be out of $20s! While the impact of these events can be measured in seconds, the total impact to me is harsh (and only the second parking ticket in my life. The other one was while we were at a free concert that suddenly wasn't so cheap!) So much for the value of risk assessment!(..and technically I shouldn't have to pay, I was loading my wallet from the ATM!)So off to the cinema. I find I am lucky to have chosen Tuesday because all movie tickets are 30% off (hey, I've saved $5!), but unlucky to have a parking ticket (oops I've lost $100!), and even unluckier to have to put up with some of the plot holes in Star Wars! That was probably a bigger disappointment than the fine (though all the Australian and New Zealand accents were cool, specially the alien in the diner!). ;)So if anyone ever tells you that it is not worth testing something because the risk of it happening is so small, tell 'em about me!!!
#8 Submitted by Harsha BN on Wed, 07/10/2002 - 6:08am.
hiGood article,when I joined new company which is basically QA provider, I was supposed take induction training for 30 days on QA, which was new subject to me, I used to get boared and used feel like sleeping in between the session, because all the people frm morning to evening used to give session only in technical language, but last day when my HR came and given the session on the view of company who is no where a technical person told us about his experience about in real life about quality that was so impressive at last day I came to knew what is the importance of Quality.
#9 Submitted by David Whitesell on Tue, 09/13/2005 - 9:43am.
One of the best chemistry teachers I had in high school understood the value of stories regarding memory. In a classroom of 20 teenage guys (I went to an all male high school), he understood that telling us about Paul Reed Smith's Guitar would indelibly imprint on our brains knowledge about electron shells, and energy states, or that we automatically pay attention to stories where things explode. It automatically gave it a frame of reference that we could relate to, no matter our level of interest in chemistry itself.
#10 Submitted by Sukanta Bhatt on Wed, 04/04/2007 - 9:10am.
This reminds me the story Lee told (many years ago in Bangalore) for the concept of Invariance during OO training. It was about his daughter crying as "The person who came out of the elevator is not the same as who went inside".Human mind can recollect pattern from a story better than dry theory stuff. But then it needs years of experience to be a good story teller! Of late, knowledge management gurus are also proposing story approach.