Marlena Compton, Mozilla; Gordon Shippey
Testers are often characterized as the conscience of a project. This session will dive deeply and uncomfortably into the psyche of software testing and those of us who claim it as our profession. Attitudes that are deeply embedded in our testing culture and their effectiveness will be examined:
- Our bug finding mandate is a wrecking ball, which we aim and swing at will
- We haven’t done our jobs until the developers are crying and the ship date has been extended by months
- Developers live to write bad code and should be eyed cautiously at all times
- Crunch time on a project is our signal to be as harsh and unforgiving as possible to everyone else on the software team.
The positive role that emotions can play in testing is also discussed. Crucial conversations are also introduced to help testers understand how to argue their point without bullying. This presentation will show why testers must have and act with conscience and have an emotional fluency in order to test software effectively. We will show that despite being erroneously called soft skills, the effective care and handling of emotions is the hardest skill in testing.
Marlena Compton, Gordon Shippey, 2011 Technical Paper, Abstract, Paper, Slides
