Why a raven is like a writing desk

In my first post, I mentioned that I was far too busy outside of work - one of the things that I do outside of work is amateur dramatics, and last weekend I was stage managing a Shakespearean production in the old opera house in Helsinki.

I enjoy acting, and always have done, but recently I've come to appreciate working backstage instead. In part, it's because I like being in control, but also it is a completely different way of using the same skills I use in the office.

People look at me as if I'm insane when I say that, but it's true.

Observation: during rehearsals I am watching everything that goes on, from which of the actors chatter all the time, to who isn't ready for their entrance, to the magically vanishing prop (the actor is miming holding a cup right up until the moment they want to use both hands, and hey presto the imaginary cup is whisked out of existence). I watch for traffic jams, when too many people leave the stage at the same time, and run into people coming on stage.

During performances, I watch even closer. The final performance of our Shakespearean play, a piece of something floated down onto the stage from the flies. I needed to find a way to get it off the stage as soon as possible, but I also needed to find out what it was - we had an enormous contraption suspended above the stage, and if it was falling to pieces we would be in big trouble.

There was an easy solution to the first part, we had a scene change coming up and I could pick up the something en route, which turned out to be a non-essential bit of duct tape (which, incidentally, I should never have left behind in the first place - a mistake I won't be making again), but if I hadn't been looking that might have stayed on the stage for the rest of the evening. I could also reassure the few actors who noticed it that they weren't about to get any heavy surprises falling on their heads.

So, as suggested above, all my observation is for the purpose of anticipating problems before they occur. Loose edges of mats can be tripped over in the dark, loose cables can be dragged across the floor, unshielded lamps in the wings can flood onto the stage during blackouts, dropped props have to be taken off stage before the next scene begins, scenery needs to be put in the same place every time or the lighting will be wrong, and so on. The number of things that can go wrong backstage is huge, and I need to identify as many as possible. I also need to find solutions to the problems, and then implement the solutions, which is where the analogy to testing falls down (somewhat, if you think of the problems that I anticipate as bugs).

In a large production like our Shakespeare, I am not alone but leading a team who also look for problems and solve them. My Assistant Stage Manager came up with the idea for suspending our contraption above the stage after anticipating problems moving it on and off stage in a blackout, making no noise. One of my stage hands took on the problem of two slightly unruly actors who had to help in a scene change, and sorted them out so that they wouldn't collide with anybody or get in the way. An experienced actor impressed upon a twelve-year-old member of the cast the importance of not standing in front of the lighting rack in the wings, casting her shadow across the entire stage.

I don't want to push the analogy too far. In the office, somebody moving my tools from where I left them is irritating - backstage, my anger was incandescent when somebody (and nobody will own up to it) moved my roll of duct tape during performance. If I hadn't checked for it before I needed it, we would have had quite a problem.

One thing that I bring from stage management back to testing is that many problems can be solved with very low-tech methods. Sure, suspending a contraption over the stage to be lowered into place is pretty high-tech, but another tricky problem was solved with three bottles of water, some crumpled up newspaper and a napkin. So in testing, while to execute one test I might use packet sniffing software, a website mirroring tool and a testing interface to the test item, to execute another I use maybe a vi macro, or a three-line Perl script. The thing that matters is how well the solution solves the problem, not how technically advanced the solution is.