How to keep your agility as a tester

Is it fair that testers are looked at as the bottleneck before value can be delivered? Of course many new developments as shifting left or right are a great help to relieve some pressure. But there is still someone who has to provide the right amount of information so that the correct call can be made: is the software good enough to go production? And this decision depends on how accurate and complete is the information we provide. This still means that there is a lot of focus and attention for the tester and the question is how do you deal with this pressure: what does it mean for you that many people are looking at you with questions as: are you done? is that problem really blocking? we need to go to production now! My presentation will be about how to deal with this pressure. And of course, as a qualisopher I like to look at philosophy to see what we can learn from this oldest science. There will be specific attention for what we can learn from stoicism. Stoicism has 4 principles we can use to deal with our daily pressure: moderation, courage, wisdom, and justice.

Moderation looks at yourself: how much self-control do you have to deal with stressful situations. Courage is what you need, to keep the facts on the table about risks that threaten the quality of the product. Wisdom all about how to use the theory of testing in your daily work (without bothering other people with the theory) and justice is focusing on the context. Can you understand and empathize with other people to understand what is the right decision if you take different angles into consideration?

In my presentation I will use my experience where I try to apply these principles and how I succeeded and failed! How I couldn’t moderate enough and was thrown out my assignment. The time I hadn’t enough courage to keep the right things on the table but on the other hand how I got appreciation because I was able to do justice to a situation in a project where our national public transport was depending upon. And I am convinced that if you apply these stoic principles in your work as a tester will keep your agility; a necessity in this fast-changing world!