Some of the most valuable testing work happens when we collaborate and communicate with others. No matter if you’re shaping stories, testing together, or sharing findings clearly, the techniques listed below can help you uncover risks, build trust, and support better decisions.
This activity invites you to think about the collaboration and communication techniques that have helped you in your testing, or ones you’re keen to try.
Choose your favourites:
From the lists below, choose your top collaboration activity and top communication method, the ones you’ve found most useful or would most like to try.
Collaboration activities:
Story shaping (three hats and three amigos)
Pair testing
Ensemble (mob) testing
Bug bashes
Swarming on urgent bugs
Joint product demos
Communication activities:
Daily stand-ups
Testing notes and debriefs
Testing dashboards
Reflect on each choice:
For each one, briefly describe:
What you like about it
What makes it valuable in a testing context?
Share your reflections:
In reply to this thread let the MoTaverse hear your thoughts. Additionally, have a read of what others have shared. Can you think of any others you or others could try? You might discover new techniques or ways of using them.
I don’t have a specific thing because it differs from the context I’m in but I believe it’s not the activities but in the way you express your communication and how you approach something. Because also every team & person is different and how you approach someone or how you approach a activity does a LOT to the mentality of the others. You can do any kind of activity as long as you make everybody feel welcome and appreciated.
It’s like some of these examples:
Saying Yes, AND instead of Yes BUT
Pausing after you say something important
Make people feel welcome and tell them failing is good
And that makes communication crucial, because how you deliver something is more important then when … (obviously don’t wait 5 weeks but yea)
It doesn’t mean I think the activities are bad, some are really needed even for co-op working. Like Pair testing, is a great activity to learn but it’s just different for all.
I actually like to bug hunt alone and then share my findings to others because I’m proud that I found a bug which required a cool scenario for example
So I like to share knowledge and teach others but I also like absorbing knowledge. So I enjoy it also when somebody else can show a cool scenario! #ContinuousLearning
#ContinuousLearning never to old to learn or to young to teach. You can get this spicy moment where you think “OOO I can use this on my project and try it out and maybe find a bug!”
We use story shaping a lot when we are looking a new feature, as the team is small. Often we will schedule a session, bounce ideas off each other, which then we get a better idea of how the A/C and Requirements are going to look. Different perspectives is key, as things will come up that you would not know/thought about e.g. developer will have a technical perspective etc.
Standups also work for us, we also do like a mini Product Demo at the end of each standup where the devs show what they’ve been working on. It’s good to know where everyone is at in the sprint during standup, and you know roughly when a piece of work could be released for testing.
