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It occurs to me this evening that when test plans, test scripts, and testers look for particular problems with excessive focus, they do so at the expense of peripheral vision.
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Let's meet!
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing, and a keynote talk at the Conference on Free Testing Tools, sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society, in Trondheim, Norway, March 22-26, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. It's sponsored by Testing Experience.
A three-day session of Rapid Software Testing, plus a day of free consulting, for a corporate client in Colorado Springs, CO, April 12-15.
Presentations at the third annual Kitchener-Waterloo Software Quality Association's conference, April 21, 2010.
I'll be at the Workshop on Performance and Reliability, one of the longest-running of the peer conferences, which this year is being held in Montreal, Quebec. James Bach is the content owner.
"I Wouldn't Have Seen It If I Hadn't Believed It: Confirmation Bias in Testing", a track session on Thursday, April 29 at the STAR East Conference, Orlando, Florida. The conference runs from Monday through Friday, April 26-30, 2010.
A three-day public offering of Rapid Software Testing in Berlin, Germany, March 29-31, 2010. This one is sponsored by Electromind.
I'll be assisting Cem Kaner as he presents his Black Box Software Testing class here in Toronto for TASSQ, the Toronto Association of System and Software Quality. This is a rare opportunity. You can get more information here. This class, the basis for the online courses offered by the Association for Software Testing is rarely offered live and in person.
Agile Testing Days in Berlin, October 4-7, 2010.
Past Presentations
You can find an extensive list of presentations and courses that I've taught, including the slides and speaker notes for many of them, here.
A very astute observation in my opinion.
I’ve worked with two kinds of tester in my career: the pragmatic kind who uses scripts as a guide deviating from them more or less depending on the nature of the product. And another kind who seem to think that a good solid test script and the rigid following of it is the end goal of the test process.
Guess which projects have been more successful (and certainly less tense!).
When i was twelve, i read something from Bruce Lee about peripheral vision, so i *trained* myself to observe what was happening around the edges of what i was looking at. It helped alot in sport because i was able see the play evolve in a *broader* way (much like switching your viewing habits to a widescreen TV).
I’ve tried to use test scripts as guide and quite often would deviate from the script if i noticed something. Other times when i’ve been stuck in a rut, the test script became a checklist to tick off and i missed anything that might be vaguely interesting.
Today, i find that using an Exploratory Test approach helps resolve the lack of peripheral visin syndrome and if i have to use scripts, i am aware of becoming stuck in the ‘rut’.