Increasing the tester’s creativity – a scientific approach
Very often when given a testing task, many testers have this ‘je ne sais pas’ feeling. They just don’t know (or, at least, are not quite sure) how to approach the problem in order to design strong and thoughtful tests (or test ideas). There are many reasons for that: problem complexity, poor requirements, lack of business understanding etc. What’s more, even under the propitious circumstances, like full and detailed documentation, the specification will not tell us *how* to test.
In this talk I would like to present a simple method for boosting the tester’s creativity when designing good, effective tests. The method is derived from the analogy with the way the physicists describe and test the physical world. However, in the IT world there exist plethora of unsupported claims about different tools, methods, frameworks and models. Bearing this in mind, as a scientist I couldn’t just assume – without any supporting data – that my method works OK .
Therefore, I approached the problem in a professional, scientific way. During the talk I will present the results of the controlled experiment on the method’s effectiveness. I will also discuss some interesting, suprising behavior of the testers involved in the experiment. These observations lead to very simple conclusions and rules that may also be helpful in the tester’s everyday work.
Speaker
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Adam Roman is a professor of computer science at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He authored many books and papers in the field of computer science and software testing. As a scientist, he claims it’s crucial to question everything and to support the opinions about testing with data and evidence. His last project is about finding ways to boost the tester’s creativity.
A fan of analytical, critical, logical and system thinking – a fan such great that recently he even wrote a book on it (‘Thinking-Driven Testing. The Most Reasonable Approach to Quality Control’).
Very often when given a testing task, many testers have this ‘je ne sais pas’ feeling. They just don’t know (or, at least, are not quite sure) how to approach the problem in order to design strong and thoughtful tests (or test ideas). There are many reasons for that: problem complexity, poor requirements, lack of business understanding etc. What’s more, even under the propitious circumstances, like full and detailed documentation, the specification will not tell us *how* to test.
In this talk I would like to present a simple method for boosting the tester’s creativity when designing good, effective tests. The method is derived from the analogy with the way the physicists describe and test the physical world. However, in the IT world there exist plethora of unsupported claims about different tools, methods, frameworks and models. Bearing this in mind, as a scientist I couldn’t just assume – without any supporting data – that my method works OK .
Therefore, I approached the problem in a professional, scientific way. During the talk I will present the results of the controlled experiment on the method’s effectiveness. I will also discuss some interesting, suprising behavior of the testers involved in the experiment. These observations lead to very simple conclusions and rules that may also be helpful in the tester’s everyday work.
Speaker
Adam Roman is a professor of computer science at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. He authored many books and papers in the field of computer science and software testing. As a scientist, he claims it’s crucial to question everything and to support the opinions about testing with data and evidence. His last project is about finding ways to boost the tester’s creativity.
A fan of analytical, critical, logical and system thinking – a fan such great that recently he even wrote a book on it (‘Thinking-Driven Testing. The Most Reasonable Approach to Quality Control’).