How much do you think about your thinking?

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I really want to know how much time you spend thinking about how you think. This will be on LinkedIn as well. I’m gathering research on thinking in a software testing context. Comments may be used in articles or even a book, but all will be fully accredited.

Can you answer some or all of these questions?

  • Have you taken any training on thinking? This could be critical or systems thinking type training
  • Have you read things about thinking? Critical or systems thinking, books related to thinking, if so, which ones?
  • Have you ever set improving your thinking or learning more about how you think as a goal?
  • Do you have go-to heuristics, mnemonics or oracles you reuse?
  • Do you go looking for new heuristics, mnemonics, oracles or similar?
  • Do you have any other thoughts on thinking in software testing?
  • What are your go-to solutions for when you get stuck or run out of test ideas?

Thank you all in advance for your help.

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  • No training.
  • Yes. Various blogs on systems thinking and shane parish great mental models audiobook. books: thinking fast and slow, black swan.
  • Not formally but being better at critical thinking has always been something I have cherished
  • I’ve enjoyed using Test Heuristics Cheat Sheet | Ministry of Testing :slight_smile: in some projects but I do find that applying them all the time is not always feasible depending on the task/allocated time.
  • No. I find that not every new thing is instantly worth obsessing about, instead finding the things that stand the test of time more valuable.
  • I find the act of writing as the greatest thinking tool not just in software testing. I’ll often take a ticket read it and start writing what i think it means or devise some tests during that. There is no point outsourcing this to AI, you just have to do it if it’s critical enough.
  • Step away from the problem, do something else, talk to another testing peer or good thinker.

Case in point, i wrote my initial list posted, then more thoughts came to mind, edited/added, posted. keep going. :slight_smile:

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Have you taken any training on thinking? This could be critical or systems thinking type training

The RST course contained a lot of training on thinking. Not just critical and systems thinking but the mechanisms of thinking, mental models, attention, assumptions and so on. I also did philosophy of science at university, which is a lot about overcoming the limitations of human perception and thought to access more objective truth.

Have you read things about thinking? Critical or systems thinking, books related to thinking, if so, which ones?

A lot, I’m going to forget some. What Is This Thing Called Science, Tacit and Explicit Knowledge, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking, Intuition Pumps, Dan Ariely’s stuff, systems thinking playbook, lessons learned in software testing, there’s definitely more. Also articles and videos and things when I find them.

Have you ever set improving your thinking or learning more about how you think as a goal?

I don’t think of it as deciding to go to the gym, but I like to think about thinking and study things about it so it’s less of a goal and more a hobby mixed with lifestyle, I suppose.

Do you have go-to heuristics, mnemonics or oracles you reuse?

I use a whole bunch, but from memory (of which mine is bad so I write a lot down), I use the HTSM to aid testing quite a lot, I like “Huh? Really? And? So?” for critical thinking, I use things I call the motion sickness heuristic, steeplechase, galumphing, CRUD, state abuse, there’s a lot of named heuristics. They tend to come up when I’m faced with an issue that could use them.

Do you go looking for new heuristics, mnemonics, oracles or similar?

I suppose I see them when I see them. I make them a lot, in terms of notes and mindmaps. Of course heuristics are natural, and almost seem to form the way our mind operates - in a good-enough guessing space. I don’t go to my search engine and type “testing heuristics”, but maybe I should.

Do you have any other thoughts on thinking in software testing?

I think it’s criminally underrated and undertaught. A lot of solutions for software testing seem to be about avoiding having to be able to think. Boilerplate ideas, mechanical instructions to follow, metrics to follow without knowing what they mean or why they’re used, and now the introduction of AI which is scary for an industry already leaning so heavily towards tools over thought. Not to mention AI and automation being a substitute for thoughtless testing, it’s going to be an increasingly dangerous world for testers who don’t invest in thought and understanding, quite possibly.

What are your go-to solutions for when you get stuck or run out of test ideas?

Taking a break is always a winner, getting overly invested in one way of thinking or observing or operating can be broken that way. Checklists, mind maps and so on with concepts and ideas to consider. I’ll very likely have my own domain checklists, risk maps and so on that might tell me both what’s important (so that I check my coverage for it) and what’s missing from those checklists so I can consider alternatives.

Understanding focus/defocus is very valuable to come unstuck and give some zooming ability to your scope and attention, too, I find.

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I’ve not done much reading on thinking, beyond what was in STEC, but I’ve seen a few interesting talks and also sort of took a course through therapy.

In this we learnt more about how the brain works, how biases exist and how to challenge them. I wrote about it a little here:

I’ve quite liked card games like TestSphere and would heu risk it as they get me thinking differently and can be fun. I have some other prompts scattered around my desk in a physical form.

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Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge is a philosophy I have found useful when thinking about problems; for example, knowledge of variation helped me understand the difference in quality of the output of two development teams. Follow the links in this article to go through the four points: Deming’s System of Profound Knowledge

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  • In a very different context, I have been getting some training on thinking. In a CBT context to help me regulate my own moods. It’s been about how meta-think can let me see myself as others see me. And that has spilled over into a whole load of revelations I never had in the last 50 years. But very few of them are about software, yet…
  • Lately, yes, starting to think about my own ideas as less of an absolute and more of just one of many after reading a few self-improvement books. But nothing systems-think wise. I kind of see all systems thinking as stemming from people just trying to solve problems in the most efficient ways possible. Is system-s thinking more than just using patterns and maps?
  • I’m scarred of how I think, so in that respect not wanting to improve how I think, but rather go for measurable things like how I act and also how I work. For example going down rabbit holes less often has made me happier, is that a goal? Yes, but it’s not a thinking goal.
  • I have a few heuristics, I love CRUD, especially the D, destroying of objects so that they release properly in a RAIA Resource acquisition is initialization - Wikipedia way mostly. I do use a fair few other heuristics, but none of them as religiously. Often it comes down to being sure I’m testing the actual thing the customer has in their hands. Which can be the one with a bit of duct tape holding the battery on, while they stand on a train platform with terrible Wifi or GSM reception for example. Immersion.
  • I don’t, I suspect that new bug-hunting ideas will come every so often, I do try to use anything I have read about at least once. But I don’t go looking.
  • My thoughts on many things are dangerous, I used to think testing was just about automation at one point, later I thought it was all about E2E. But now I think it is more about customer experience and about cost.
  • Running out of ideas when I get stuck, involves putting things on the back-burner and switching entirely to a new project for a while. There is always more work. I better hop to it, that platform-independent pop-up window auto-closer is not going to write itself.

/edit
Oh yeah, and just reading everything I write one more time, after, I have hit send, just to see how it might land with someone treading it. This post is one of my first to need no edits, going to chalk that up as a thinking hack victory.

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No, but yes, I have seen a couple of videos on YouTube on how to think, or handle complex situations, enhance problem-solving skills through thinking, etc.

Yes, I have read many articles and blogs on critical thinking and also watched videos of MoT Testing Planet and YouTube on systems thinking.

One of the articles I liked on critical thinking is this one - Dear software testers, is your critical thinking ability even alive?!

Yes, in the past, I have many times set it as a goal, but I haven’t put much effort into it.

Yes, I have my own heuristics designed based on my experience. Apart from that, I also take reference from the heuristics of MoT and James Bach. I don’t find much use of mnemonics in my testing work so far, but still, I’m fond of mnemonics, and I have some mnemonics created by myself.

Yup, always. I always keep exploring new stuff to improve my testing process and also my thinking skills.

It never got the attention and priority it deserved in the testing field, very few folks openly talk about it in public, and the rest of the people are mostly focused on automation and tools.

Take a break, have a small conversation with colleagues, or discuss the situation with manager and PM that I’m stuck and realizing my problem they suggest some workaround.

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