Tutorial C

Engage Resistance with the Power of ‘Verwondering’

Anne Colder

Jantien van de Meer

09:30-13:00 CEST Tuesday 28th Sept

Any tester has several important skills that team members do not necessarily like. Asking uncomfortable questions, exploratory poking in software to reveal issues that take time to fix or confronting the business with flaws in their design. Testers are inquisitive, adventurous and sceptical, and that’s exactly why we need them.

This means that testers frequently deal with resistance, reluctance and annoyance from our peers. A great skill to have is therefore dealing with these behaviours, to help people get to a point they might initially not want to go. This workshop focuses on that ability and will give you hands-on practice to become better at it.

We will start with ways to communicate your observations about the state of the team or software with delayed judgment. We explore psychological models related to primal fears to identify why people resist or refuse. The workshop ends with a great model that not only helps us to take different perspectives to resistance but also discover new ways of dealing with it.