Faith-based versus empirical test automation
There’s a strange thing that happens when people outside of a field try to direct work they do not understand. The skilled technical writer becomes a typist; the expert on the helpdesk ends up routing requests. Project managers, who can do noble things, become a sort of nag, whose only job is to ask, “Are you done yet?” and update the schedule. The outcomes we get when people who do not understand the work but try to manage it are poor. This leads to either attempts to break down the work into its smallest component (the brick metaphor earlier), or, sometimes, self-service.
For technical writing, self-service is simply having the workers define their own systems. Low-value project managers can be replaced by an Agile tool that shows the board and projects when the work will be done based on velocity. The helpdesk person who is told to only be a phone router will be replaced by having customers make their own helpdesk...
