CAST 2014

As software testers working and collaborating with engineers, we may believe the only thinking skills we need are scientific. Thinking skills typically thought of as scientific include: observing, recognizing patterns, dimensional thinking and modeling. But are we disregarding creative and artistic thinking skills such as abstracting, analogizing, empathizing and playing? Abstracting helps us to realize the purpose of product and not get lost on details. Analogizing helps us make use of our knowledge from past experiences in other domains and anticipate problems and solutions we might otherwise miss. Empathizing helps us work with an array of people from the business to clients to user experience designers and engineers as we collaborate with other people to learn, test and deliver a product. And without play, without a sense of exploration, our testing might be limited to requirements checking and not fully testing a product. Karen N. Johnson explores the thinking skills of a tester and how to explicitly apply scientific and creative thinking skills to the craft of software testing.