Why We Failed at Building in Testability

10th March 2022
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Jitesh Gosai's profile
Jitesh Gosai

Principal Tester

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Talk Description

This talk is about when I was a test lead in a development team that moved to testability, succeeded but then ultimately failed to maintain the new way of working. I’ll detail how we got started with testability, what caused us to fail in maintaining the approach and how other teams could do it differently. 

How we got started will cover: how we created a joint understand in what testability means for our product. How our team leaders encouraged experimentation, reflection and speaking up which was key for collaboration. This level of collaboration coupled with their joint understanding is what really enabled the team to build in testability. 

Why we failed will cover: what foundational team behaviours were missed by the leaders for this approach to continue beyond the initial implementation. The foundations being establishing psychological safety, how everyone can and must learn from failure, how to work across discipline boundaries and the power of positively framing work. 

What others can do will cover: Why team leaders are best positioned to do this. I’ll detail some basic steps that teams can take towards: creating psychological safety, how teams can get better at learning from failure, what they can do to encourage working across discipline boundaries and what positively framing work looks like

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

  • What we are doing wrong in teams that causes testability to fail testability isn’t the problem but team culture via incentives are
  • What are the leadership behaviours that enable success with testability encouraged experimentation, reflection and speaking up which was key for collaboration
  • What steps can be taken to maintaining testability once established creating psychological safety, how teams can better learn from failure, what they can do to encourage working across discipline boundaries and what positively framing work looks like
Principal Tester
Jit’s expertise in testing spans over two decades. He currently works as the Principal Tester for the BBC. He aims to help teams build quality into their products and cultivate a Culture of Quality.
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