The Surprising Benefits of Exploring Other Disciplines and Industries - Conor Fitzgerald

Could exploring diverse disciplines and industries lead to dramatic improvements in your effectiveness as a tester?

The craft of testing has its origins in the social sciences. The characteristics that we seek to develop as testers include communication, creativity, critical thinking and curiosity.  

Typically we focus on metaphors from engineering and manufacturing and learn about the disciplines of these industries.

There is so much to gain by learning about other industries such as Aviation and Health Care, and studying other disciplines, for instance, heuristics originated from behavioural economics and mind mapping was developed over centuries by philosophers and psychologists.

In this talk, I will share my journey of being transformed from a regimented confirmation tester to a context-based exploratory tester.

These changes occurred by the challenges faced by testing software in different industries and more importantly studying non-engineering disciplines.