….your true colours.
This weekend was a landmark occasion for my eldest son. Ever since he has understood what a car wash is, he has campaigned that my car be washed. In fairness to him, I hadn’t washed it in 3+ years!
Some people have a love affair with their cars.
Others view them as a functional means to get from A to B.
I drive one of these:
It does a job, it doesn’t break down and it is cheap to run.
For the average person, this is not a desirable car. In fact, I have worked with people that refused to take a ride in it. So, double the undesirable nature of the car, with the fact that it hadn’t been cleaned in so long.
This was not a product designed to be lusted after by petrolheads.
As I was cleaning my car, it reminded me of a project I once took part in, to ‘upgrade’ an automation test suite.
We worked with a third party to complete the integration and my role was to initiate a review procedure to ensure quality.
The process consisted of two separate reviews, one for technical functionality and the other for best practice conformance.
The first process was to ensure that the scripts did what they were designed to do, and as well as possible. This we can all relate to and is fundamental.
The second is perhaps not one that we see all of the time, or is seen as the lesser of the two more often. That is the look and feel of the scripts.
It is very easy to want to release something as soon as it works, we live in a world of instant gratification after all.
But as end users, how much do we appreciate something that looks as good as it works?
A comment that stuck with me from one of the team that we worked with was how impressed they were with our commitment to both processes. He likened it to a car, with both wonderful performance and drive, but also that looked spectacular.
We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but consumers want something that looks and feels good to use.
I want to feel proud of the products that I work on, I want others to see that product and how good it looks and to experience how good it is to use.
Kate Veatch: I’m curious, is it strictly apathy, or do you really not have a goal in life?
Peter La Fleur: I found that if you have a goal, that you might not reach it. But if you don’t have one, then you are never disappointed. And I gotta tell ya… it feels phenomenal.
Kate Veatch: Well I guess that makes sense, in a really sad way.
I want to have my cake and to eat it, if we don’t strive for the best, then we will never achieve the best.
I guarantee that if I had a car that I took more pride in, I wouldn’t need to wait for my son to prompt me to clean it again.
Blog post title lyrics from: True colors – by Cyndi Lauper.
Find all the songs from my blog posts at this Spotify playlist.
Chris Armstrong 