Debugging the Mind: Teaching Developers to Think Like Testers
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Locked
Founder, Director
Talk Description
For years now, we've been hearing a lot about the tester's mindset. While it remains as important as ever, I believe it has evolved. It has shifted from being the role of one person in the team who explores the application to find edge cases, thinking like a slightly deranged user, to a role that involves teaching this mindset to others. This includes developers, to help them write better unit and integration tests; product owners, to consider the unintended consequences of insufficiently bold ideas; and delivery leads, who may be hesitant to allocate time for proper test setup in the CI/CD pipeline.
I'll discuss how the tester role has evolved based on my experience and what I believe a modern tester needs to keep in mind to inspire their team to prioritise quality in all development activities. These days, critical thinking alone is no longer sufficient. Helping the team to move quickly while embedding quality into our processes has become more crucial than ever.
By the end of this session, you'll be able to:
- Gain a comprehensive understanding of how the role of testers has evolved to focus on business improvement
- Explore the importance of viewing quality through the lens of the customer, acknowledging that customer feedback is the ultimate measure of product quality
- Get equipped with strategies to nurture and lead a mature quality culture within their teams
Kat Obring has spent 20+ years in software delivery: DevOps QA engineer, Head of Delivery, and now a quality coach who helps engineering teams build measurable improvement practices. She runs Kato Coaching Ltd and has presented at PeersCon, Agile Testing Days, HUSTEF, and TestBash, among others. She is direct, opinionated, and has strong feelings about the word "quality."
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