CAST 2019

Finding bugs requires detective work. You look for evidence, you interrogate witnesses - and some of those might not be telling the truth! You need lateral thinking to find your perpetrator. 
As testers we often hear that the capability to think outside the box is an essential skill to have. In fact, this skill is great to have even if you’re not a tester. 
Thinking outside the box permits you to generate new and innovative ideas, to find bugs that nobody could think about, it can also help you find completely new ways to solve problems. 
We all have unconscious biases that can limit our observational skills and creativity. Rachel and Lisa will introduce lateral vs. vertical thinking, and explain how our brain’s “wiring” can make thinking outside the box be difficult. 
In this playful workshop, you will discover several common cognitive biases that can work against us and get in the way of effective testing. You’ll practice some games that promote lateral thinking, in a safe and fun environment. You’ll leave the workshop with new skills and guidance on how to keep building up your lateral thinking “muscles”. 

One area that testers might be able to enhance their contributions to software development teams is how we perceive and contribute to unit testing. Being able to influence this type of testing in a positive manner is a skill that testers will need to get to grips with, as more companies start to embrace a model of lone testers in cross functional teams. The shift of focus from primarily the testing that testers do, to the testing that the team does, is a key shift in thinking and behaviour.

To facilitate this shift, I believe testers busting their own illusions about this aspect of building something good would bring us much closer to developers and help us realise what other layers of testing can cover most effectively. The last point is pertinent here, as knowing and guiding unit testing brings the role of integration, acceptance and exploratory testing into sharp focus.

This is a topic that has always intrigued me, having predominantly worked as a single tester on a team for the last five or so years. I reached out to the community with the question “What do testers believe about unit testing?” and received a lot of engagement. The good users of Twitter added another 50 or so illusions that testers might have about this layer of testing. I figured that based on that level of engagement, maybe this would make an interesting talk! It wasn’t only testers who responded too, suggesting that there might be some shared illusions about unit testing that are cross disciplinary.

The growing list delighted me, so I wrote a blog with the raw list, it can be found here http://testingisbelieving.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/testers-guide-to-myths-of-unit-testing.html

The list alone is interesting but now I would like to share my analysis of it with you, focusing on:

• Recurring themes within the list and how to address them as a tester or developer.
• Particular illusions to look out for with examples from my recent past.
• A guide for developers to engage with testers on unit testing, and testers with developers.

Receiving feedback can be tough. It can be hard to remember that it is meant to help improve work going forward, not to point out current flaws. It can be incredibly easy to take feedback or comments personally in the workplace, but what is the impact when we do so?

When we personalize situations we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. It becomes easier to focus in on minute details and not look at the overall context in which the feedback is being given. The impacts of this lower level of focus can result in wasted time from; chasing the wrong issues, laying blame, making up excuses, refusing to ask for help, and ultimately avoiding discussions around the root cause and ways to improve.

This workshop will begin by drawing on experiences and examples of situations such as; testing debriefs (tester to tester interactions), bug discovery (tester to developer interactions), and inter team projects (team to team interactions) and discuss tactics for each on staying objective and productive. Once we’ve learned some of these tactics we will dive in with some hands on demonstrations before we break off into groups to give them a try on our own; from both sides of the conversation! When we look at feedback for what it truly is - a way to improve - we can build better relationships between communities and teams to make them stronger as a result.