After two days of managing — though one day of actually focusing on it — I’m realizing that this time, I’m keeping my hands clean.

It’s different than before. Last time we did this, I kept a close watch of the people I was managing, had long and detailed debriefings, and coached as much as possible. This time, it’s more: “give them what they need up front, and let them go off on their own.”

I can’t say I have enough information as to which approach I like more — so I won’t even begin to hint as to which approach we should do — but I’m gaining some insight here.

Without long and detailed debriefings, I’m seeing:

• A higher bug-duplicate rate than before.
• A lower understanding (in my head) of what’s actually being found.
• Less drive on my part to jump the information hurdle.
• And more of a desire to let bug reports speak for themselves.

On the same token, I’m seeing greater personal drive from testers to self-manage, which could be a big plus.

Though there’s good and bad here, it’s important to note the context changes:

• I have all new testers (i.e., they haven’t worked with me on testing before).
• Reports that they write are going directly to the manager I was supposed to report to, meaning there’s no apparent need for any “high level” reporting.
• Managing is lower on my totem poll time-wise, as I’m only supposed to spend two days a week doing it.

Although it pains me, in general, to not be as involved as I’d like, the outcome of this could be very informative. In simple terms: I think we’re on our way to finding our sweet spot, and by the time this is all over, we’ll have some good insight to share.