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Track Talk Th9

An Ancient Science for Advanced Critical Thinking for Testers and Teams

Lalitkumar Bhamare

12:30-13:15 CEST Thursday 15th June

They say that the best way to deliver quality software is to give customers what they want.

Sounds quite straightforward and easy to do, right? If you are involved with software development, you know it is easier said that done. What makes it so hard to give the customers what they want? And what role do testers play in it?

Between what customers want and what software teams deliver, things often get lost on the way. Things typically get lost during communication, during interpretations, during analysis, during transforming customer needs into engineering requirements, and so on. One of the key reasons for things going wrong on these different levels is the “lack of critical thinking”. In other words, it is the lack of asking enough questions in context.

In order to deliver what customers want, it is important to develop true knowledge about what is to be delivered. And that requires us to critically think and question the status quo at every stage. Similarly when we test, merely checking the conformance with requirements is not enough. Testers must excel at the science and art of asking questions and questioning things critically.

While studying Nyaya Shashtra (a school of Indian philosophy known for its contribution to theory of logic and treaties on epistemology), Lalit realised how greatly it can benefit testers (and software teams) if they apply Nyaya syllogism and its erotetic model of reasoning to their software efforts.

In this talk, Lalit will share how testers can enhance their critical thinking skills and find “true knowledge” about software based on principles of Nyaya Shashtra.