Testing is a team sport

Testing is a team sport. Here's a small peek into my thought process when I was confronted with a challenge at work:

It's 11:00 AM, and I've just left an online meeting. I made an agreement in that meeting with a colleague to start working on a specific test goal.

At once, I started writing a plan to reach this goal. I prefer to work in a structured way, and the goal should be split up in sub-tasks. The thing is, I cannot complete this plan by myself. The colleague has some specific knowledge and expertise that I lack, and they need to fill in the missing blanks of the plan.

So, I send them a message with a link to my plan (which is public, as I don't like hiding my work) and ask them when they have time to talk about it.

No response. We're all working from home, so I have no idea what they're up to. Looking in their Outlook calendar, I see no other meetings.

During moments like these, I'm faced with a decision. Do I bluntly call them? Or didn't I give them enough time to respond? They could be doing deep work, and I know I would be pissed off if someone called me at such a time. We have no agreements on how we communicate, so I'm just rolling with my own values and experiences from the past.

In the past, I would have immediately called. But now, I have changed my stance a bit. I have taken responsibility to set this task in motion, but it's not only on me to see it through. It cannot be. I don't want to shift into "police mode". This is a form of emotional labor that I no longer tolerate.

Testing is a team sport.

We had a verbal agreement to work on this together, so I have to assume some degree of professionalism from this colleague. I have to trust that they know how to plan their time and tasks at work. I have to trust that they'll get back to me. I have posed my question: "when do you have time to talk this through?", and now it's out of my hands. Chances are, nothing will happen today with this task.

Anyhow: I'm stuck in waiting mode.

This is why a lot of IT work takes a long time, in my experience. People are focused on individual productivity, and not on finishing things.