I think there is a connection between two things: over-planning and just not caring. Is when you try to desperately do a thing , you encounter problems or you get tired and then just not care. Because sometimes planning just reduces the pleasure of doing something that should be exciting. Like plan to go in some trip, plan everything including when going to toilet, and then tell friends that can afford similar trip what nice it was. But in testing are also similar situations, we plan to test some product in some way, but as we evolve on it everything may change. We encounter new problems, or new context that drives us away from the initial planed path.

Separately taken over-planning and not caring shouldn’t happen. But sometimes it does.

Over-planning

I read this blog post http://thesocialtester.posterous.com/planning-for-when-cows-attack where there is the nice story of a person that was used to over-plan. Sometimes Test Managers are pushed and try to over plan stuff, especially when they are not experienced or pushed by higher management. Of course the result is pretty bad usually and leads to the exasperation of the rest of the team.

The human mind tries to balance things in a weird way and because the over-planning is actually the result of a unpleasant forced action the tendency can be not-caring.

Not-caring

Not caring brings with it a lot of excuses. Like the picture I borrowed (with his permission) from Andy Glover’s blog.

There are too many bugs to capture, need for break, personal excuses, not enough payment and so on.

My opinion that the best way to avoid that is to get the relative independence to test and keep the passion fueling the actions.