Russell Craxford - Subjective Reality and Software Testing

A keen lover of quality and agile Russell hails from the North East of England where he’s helped set up and run several meetups and conferences. He’s a co-host of the Testing Peers podcast and a passionate speaker at events on topics around agility and quality. Russell has also helped run the test clinic at a EuroStar test conference for the past 5 years and enjoys helping people with their testing problems. Having tested and managed in various environments working heavily with distributed teams he is currently working as Head of Quality Management at Apexon helping to grow the test and quality function.

Reality is made up of our knowledge and experience. It’s altered by our context and shaped by our cognitive biases and our cognitive distortions. Thus everyone of us is different and so is our reality, it’s subjective.

Understanding what shapes our subjective realities enables us to challenge and explore software from different perspectives, avoid common pitfalls and make better decisions both in our jobs and lives. I’ll talk you through some common biases and distortions and how they’ve impacted me, my testing and my teams and how with knowledge comes power.

Takeaways:

• What 'cognitive bias' and 'cognitive distortions' mean
• Awareness of how specific biases and distortions impact your software & Testing
• Ways to challenge yourself and your biases/distortions