Testing in a world of abundance – the importance of asking the right questions Part 2

What makes a good tester? Its the ability to ask the right questions and use this to make the right test plan, so says, Paul Theyers

This is backed up by  some quotes from  the  book I’m currently reading:  Abundance – the Future is better than you think that pertain to testing and learning in an exponential media.

So testers working on software and learning about new technologies to be good at their jobs, must work in this exponential environment.  And to work in an exponential environment, the way to anticipate future needs is via critical thinking, and as Paul says, to learn to ask the right questions.

This book makes the case that exponential trends are hard for us humans to grasp (intuitively) but software and education are 2 of the exponentially improving trends today.

Predicting exponential rate of change is not intuitive to us because our intuitive self quickly pattern matches anything new with all our past experience. And extrapolates linearly. Which is wrong of course.

Here are some relevant quotes from Abundance:

pp 181ff:

“what we do know is that the industrialized model of education … is no longer necessary”

“but creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, that’s a different  story”

“21st learning has dozens of moving parts, but at the center of them is a simple idea. “over and over again” sayas Wagner “in hundreds of interviews with business leaders and college professors, they stressed the ability to ask the right questions”

“how do you do things that haven’t been done before, where you have to rethink or think anew, or break set in a fundamental way. … you have to spend the time to ask the right questions. There is something about understanding what the right questions are, and there is something about asking the nonlinear, counterintuitive questions. These are the ones you take to the next level” ( Ellen Kumata)