Storytelling In Software Testing - Christian Vogt

Talk Description

Human beings are natural storytellers. As a survival strategy, evolution enabled us to learn and grow from stories (Don’t hunt in the swamp, Niknak never came back from there!). The world is full of stories and they affect our behaviour significantly all day – for good or bad.

As in all areas of life, also in software development decisions are often made based on intuition rather than careful evaluation, even though this evaluation is done beforehand. In addition, wrong interpretation of statements due to missing communication is usual. Storytelling can be used as a tool to communicate findings in software testing and improve decision making.

In this talk, I present how stories affect the human brain, what Campbell’s hero’s journey means for the day-to-day job of a software tester, and how storytelling can improve testing, reporting, application- and user-understanding.

Takeaways:

• An understanding of the fundamental concept of storytelling (hook, hold and reward) and how someone can use it as a software tester.
• How to build empathy for the user?
• How good is the software and how good can I test it?

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

Christian

After my PhD in Physics and a brief Post-Doc period, I started with the company Schlumberger as a software tester four years ago. My focus was (and still is) automated testing using Ranorex.

Together with my wife, I write novels, playbooks and short stories since 2012. Genres are fantasy, historical, steampunk, and science fiction. In the years 2013 and 2014, we achieved the Deutscher Phantastik Preis (German Fantasy Award) for Die zerbrochene Puppe (the broken doll) and Eis und Dampf (ice and steam), respectively. Actual projects involve rebellious craftsman and swordfighters, Romans in space, as well as mysteries beneath ice sheets.