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Contextual Decision-making in Testing - Apathy or Indifference? - Mark Tomlison

13th January 2023

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Mark Tomlinson

Performacologist

Contextual Decision-making in Testing - Apathy or Indifference? - Mark Tomlison image

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Talk Description

To test, or not to test, that is the choice: whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the rigors of requirements-based testing or to freshly apply contexts to our thinking and by awareness prevail? Sure, we make choices in our testing practices leveraging our prior experiences and training on the discipline. How we understand ourselves in the engagement of making choices about testing is essential to fully developing your ninja skills as a tester. Beyond your typical learning about exploratory, risk-based and session-based testing techniques, this session will seek to help you take three steps into a more complete understanding of your decision-making as a tester:

Step one: test choices guided by externally defined influences like models, techniques, tools
Step two: test choices based on our conscious, internally defined influences and intentions
Step three: test choices based on our awareness of subconscious, intuitively defined motivation

In this session, participants will engage in exercises to practice these three different perspectives on how we make our choices in testing and apply how we might use apathy (or indifference) in the sequence of our logic; as opposed to positive, outcomes-based test choices. We will share contemporary experiences and explore how we make choices in our focus and attention while designing, improvising and conducting tests. Attendees will learn an alternative way to help manage the deluge of decisions we must make in real-time, exploratory testing; by identifying those items we absolutely do not care about, and why we don’t care about them.

What you’ll learn

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

Mark Tomlinson

Performacologist

Mark Tomlinson is a performance engineering and software testing consultant. His career began in 1992 with a comprehensive two-year test for a life-critical transportation system, a project which captured his interest for software testing, quality assurance, and test automation. That first test project sought to prevent trains from running into each other -- and Mark has metaphorically been preventing “train wrecks” for his customers for the past 24 years. He has broad experience with real-world scenario testing of large and complex systems and is regarded as a leading expert in software testing automation with a specific emphasis on performance. For the majority of Mark’s career he has worked for companies as a testing practitioner and consultant using the leading products for performance testing, profiling and measurement. He has also consistently established close ties and relationships with the major vendors who create these tools. Mark worked for six years at Microsoft Corporation as a performance consultant and engineer in the Microsoft Services Labs, in the Enterprise Engineering Center and in the SQL Server labs. His efforts to foster the success of Microsoft’s top-tier Enterprise customers was focused on their early adoption of Microsoft products as part of mission-critical operations. In 2008, as the LoadRunner Product Manager at HP Software Mark led the team to deliver leading innovations for performance testing and engineering as part of HP's suite of performance validation and management products. Mark also assists with coaching, training and consulting to help organizations adopt modern performance testing and engineering strategies, practices and behaviors for better performing technology systems. He is the co-founder and host of the popular podcast PerfBytes (www.perfbytes.com).

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