Targeting Quality 2019

When building a perfect tester mindset, both in ourselves and in future software testers, we often focus on technical skills. We emphasize these skills because they are critical to what helps us write and execute tests, write defects, etc. But, shouldn’t we also consider the curious, creative, and adventurous traits that lie at the heart of testing? What are we doing to make sure those don't get lost or overlooked as we grow and develop our testing mindset?
In the 1999 film The Matrix, Morpheus says, “Good adaptation and improvisation. But your weakness is not your technique.” When I heard this line, I thought that perhaps this film gets to the heart of these questions. Morpheus, the mentor figure of the movie, focuses on teaching Neo, the protagonist, to re-assess his assumptions of how the system within which they are living should work, to see how it does work. Through the empowerment of his creative and curious traits, Neo is given the tools to find the weak points of the program and the confidence to break the system. Using the film as our contextual guide to give our concepts a relatable frame of reference, we will explore what the movie can show us about teaching new testers, and about growing ourselves as testers. We will explore what skills we can focus on to build fearlessness into the testing mindset. With a fearless testing mindset, we can become The One – A Software Tester.