10 Years in Testing, 10 lessons – Lesson 8

Lesson 8: Read Thinking, Fast and Slow to improve your testing

There are many books written about testing and some of them have aged like milk (cough TMap cough).

The single most important book I’ve read in my life and the book that has influenced my testing the most is of course: Thinking, Fast and Slow. This book caused a paradigm shift in how I test. I feel like a broken record by now because I have been claiming this since 2015.

Learning (more) about cognitive biases will open your eyes. It will explain so much about how the world works, how humans work. It also has important implications for testing.

My top-3 take-aways from the book:

1. Testing cannot be objective.
2. The testing that one person does will be influenced by cognitive biases.
3. Code (production code or test code, doesn’t matter) will be influenced by cognitive biases.

This book is the best humble pie you can eat when it comes to being realistic about testing.

Seriously people, level up your critical thinking skills. It’s the single most important thing you can do in this crazy world and it’s also a good skill to have as a tester.

Read the rest of the blog post in this series!