Do You Know How to Ask a Question?

Talk Description

QA stands for Question Asker.
That is what Twitter tells us, but what does that mean?
Gathering information is an integral part of our daily routine and asking questions is probably the oldest and most powerful technique to do so.
But what is a question really? What is there beyond the semantic parts of a question? How does that fit in with communication? How does my question affect other people?

These are the questions I will ask in my talk and provide some thoughts about these. We will touch upon topics like

• communication models
• types of questions
• questioning techniques 
• active listening

and see how these can help us as testers to gather the information that we really need to get our testing going. I will also provide hints as to where these things will be helpful in remote contexts.

What You'll Learn

• Understand the SCARF model for psychological context of communication
• The difference between open and closed questions
• The difference between depth and breadth when asking questions
• How to deal with different communication styles
• Understand the importance of active listening

By the end of this session, you'll be able to:

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Christian Kram

Trainer and Coach

My core areas as a coach and consultant are quality assurance and software testing. I helped getting customers the quality they need for over 15 years in different roles, ranging from manual tester in comparative product evaluation over automotive test manager to head of testing for ERP software. My main topics are in the field of agile testing, exploratory testing and establishing quality in the whole software development cycle.In addition to software I have been testing real world objects like chairs and mattresses in the past.