Chasing valueless certifications. Rage quitting. Overstaying in a job.

Just some of the mistakes I've made over the years. Like when my Product Owner insisted "Nobody would ever do that!", so I didn't test a particular set of inputs for a POST request...

We went live and💥!

That's when I learned to get curious!

Whenever you hear a potential myth get curious!

Otherwise, you may blunder and repeat my mistakes.

Curiosity is a trait many of us possess but it's easy to ignore. Don't!

When your spidey-sense tingles follow these steps:

#1. Stay alert and don't get flustered.

It's easy to be ambushed by testing myths & legends in the wild.

For example:

• Before hiring - "You need this ISTQB certification to get hired" (need?)

• Before testing - "How long will it take to test?" (or is it a question of how much testing can be performed before a deadline?)

• During testing - "We can't test without test cases" (customers report bugs with test cases. Interesting.)

• After testing - "Why didn't you find that bug?" (how else can we handle bugs?)

Yibambe! Your teammates probably don't think about testing as much as you.

#2. Honour the truth in their story.

You're probably the testing expert on the team but don't dismiss your teammate's experiences. Try this instead:

• Explore - What led to their beliefs? What made the belief reasonable in that context?

• Use open questions - Frame questions with "Who", "What", "Where", "When" and "How". Avoid "Why" if possible.

• Use active listening - Listen to understand!

Remember everybody is at least 2% right, so find it!

#3. Show them another perspective.

Forget who's right and wrong! Instead, explore the past and present contexts.

• Use their language/metaphors to reframe the situation.

• Do they realise what lead to success/failure before?

• Co-create experiments to test each other's opinions.

If I'd spent a few minutes using these during my API testing, I could've avoided a lot of trouble!