Cognitive Biases In Software Testing
Maaike Brinkhof
Course Coming March 2021
Skills you will learn:
Learn how to recognise cognitive biases, explain what they are and use them to your advantage in your testing
- Maaike BrinkhofWhen you think about testing tools, do you think about the brain first? Deep thinking is necessary for good testing. That’s why it’s very important to develop critical thinking skills to improve the way you test. But, no matter how good you already are at critical thinking, you will make thinking errors. This is because we all are influenced by cognitive biases. This has impactful consequences for testing because wasn’t testing supposed to be unbiased and factual? This course will help you navigate the harsh reality that your testing will be influenced by biases and thinking errors.
I will help you recognise cognitive biases and explain what they are.
How do they affect your behaviour? Can you avoid them? How do you recognise the most important biases in yourself and in others? How do you improve testing despite being biased? How do you get your team to test more effectively (despite being influenced by biases)?
Daniel Kahneman has written a very comprehensive book centred around this topic: “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. This book has been an inspiration and a great source for this course.
Maaike Brinkhof
Maaike is an independent agile tester. She loves testing because there are so many ways to add value to a team, be it by thinking critically about the product, working on the team dynamics, working to clarify the specs and testability of the product, getting the whole team to test with Exploratory Testing…the options are almost endless! She likes to help teams who are not sure where or what to test. After reading “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman she developed a special interest in the role of psychology in software development. During ‘analogue time’ Maaike likes to practice yoga, go for a run, check out new local beers, play her clarinet and travel with her boyfriend.
