Tag: Protreptic

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Say "Yes, but…" and remain true to your values

Testers sometimes have to make compromises. We have professional values and beliefs, but they may conflict with values in the contexts we act in.
Isn’t there always someone who matter who has an opinion about what testing is and how it should be performed? 
I remeber a few situations, where I have felt I was tasked to do something in a way that I didn’t agree with. How can I make a difference, then?
This feeling points to something which is a dilemma for every skilled professional: We can sometimes feel that our personal and professional values are challenged, but there is still a job to be done.
How can a I make the compromise, accepting a challenge, while staying true to my values and beliefs? 
It’s about learning and improving.
 
Social responsibility
To me, one of the most important things about being professional and a context driven tester is taking social responsibility. This is an important value to me.
Social responsibility is not about self-critique. As a professional, my personal doubts and worries are valuable.
Instead it is about trying to give customers what they need by understanding their situation and helping them get better with what we are doing together.
That requires what I call personal leadership. But foremost, it requires conversation and negotiation.
 
“Yes, but…”
In his “Improv(e) your testing” talk at Let’s Test 2016, Damian Synadinos @dsynadinos reminded me of a simple and efficient strategy to opening conversations. In improv, a golden rule is to start replies with with “yes, and…”. This helps adding to whatever is happening on stage.
In professional situations we sometimes have to subtract instead:

Yes, I will perform the test and report to you about it, but please explain me how the test case and bug count metrics you ask me to do will be useful?

The “yes“-part is about accepting the challenge. The “but” implies that I’m going to stay true to my knowledge, experience, values and beliefs and raise professional doubts about methods I’m asked to use, things I’m asked to report, processes I’m asked to follow.
I’m not asking rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions shut windows to the world and enclose me in my own thoughts and ideas.
So I keep thought in the back of my mind when I’m asked to do something in a certain way: “Is this really in the best interest of the people who matter: The project stakeholders?”
Replying “yes, but…” enables me to act on my personal values in contexts which have values of their own.
 
Masterclass in New York City
On September 26th, during Test Masters Academy‘s REINVENTING TESTERS WEEK in New York City, I will be doing a workshop titled: “Act on your values!” on values and personal leadership.
As testers and IT-professionals we have to quickly recognize and adapt to ever changing contexts in order to produce value for our employers, clients and various diverse customers. This can be challenging, both on the personal and the professional level. As leaders, team members and individuals we often have to lead ourselves.
The workshop will focus on how our personal and shared values can guide us. It will be based on the principles of protreptic dialogue, which is a philosophical facilitated conversation revolving around the values embedded in what we say, do and think. First described in ancient Greece in the fourth century, professor Ole Fogh Kirkeby of Copenhagen Business School has revived protreptic dialogue as both a concept, a leadership tool, and a coaching principle with the objective to “turn us towards ourselves”.
I plan for the workshop to be a safe space for exploration and learning. Participants are expected to share opinions, thoughts and ideas, and to treat others’ opinions, thoughts and ideas in a respectful and appreciative manner. No prior knowledge of leadership, dialogue, philosophy, or protreptic dialogue is required.
Key takeaways

  • Consciousness about personal values and values of the contexts we work in
  • Strategies for dealing with the dilemmas we face as testers
  • An introduction to protreptic concepts and dialogue

Get tickets here.
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Categories
Blog posts in English

Value centered dialogue at CPHContext

I’m beginning to get quite excited about speaking at CPHContext about ”Value Centered Dialogue in Context Driven Testing”. It’s not the first time I speak at a testing conference, but I am going to demonstrate a type of dialogue for which there is no firm recipie and I can therefore only plan for mentally. And that is of course a bit exciting 🙂
To settle my nerves, I’m writing this blog to reveal something about what I’m going to tell people.
Recently, a good friend asked me: “What is leadership is to you?”
My answer came quicker than I thought it would: “It is about setting people free to do their best,” I said.
We were talking about personal leadership values.
Heuristics and values
There are many ways to lead people – we could call them leadership heuristics – and while you and I can attend the same courses or read the same books and therefore learn the same leadership heuristics, our personal values shape our actions and therefore the way we apply these heuristics.
Everything I’m going to say in the session will be about basic human values and how I have found a special type of dialogue can bring new energy into context driven testing leadership.
I have my slides ready, and I hope it will be a good experience for everyone attending my session.
A protreptic dialogue
I’d like to give show something about how a protreptic dialogue between me (the guide) and you would start out. I might start with a question to you:
What does it mean to be context driven?
I’ll listen carefully to your answer and depending on what you answer (there is no right or wrong here as it is about you) I might tell you something about the origins of the word context. Words are important in protreptic dialogue.
The word context is orignally latin and comes from contextus which means joining together. The danish word for context is sammenhæng, which means the same, so context is something we are joined to, or maybe even woven into, as the latin origins actually indicate.
Then, what does it mean to be context driven: Can something that we are joined to or even woven into drive us? It might if there is motion in it, so if we want to understand something about how the context is driving us, we should look at the dynamics in it. But perhaps the driving could be reversed: Can our testing set the context in motion?
This question was for you, and again I’ll listen carefully to what you say. If it was me, I might answer myself like this:
Of course we can set the context in motion, and we do, as testers. After all, testers discover stuff other people have not yet discovered, we build trust, create business value, spoil illusions and other things that send motion back into the context.
This is interesting. As a guide, I’ll listen to your value laden words: discovery, trust, value, illusions. In a human value-perspective they have meanings related to the four basic human values: The Good, The Beautiful, The Just and The True.
In the ongoing protreptic dialogue, we will explore these values together, getting very close to what they really mean to you. We might talk about your work or other things in your life, but only if you want to and bring it up. This is not a therapy session.
Protreptic dialogue is meant to be a nice and respectful experience for both. There are no roles to play, we are both ”ourselves”, but we are taking a journey together to discover something about ourselves, in this case about context driven testing.

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Blog posts in English

Core Values in Testing

There’s something about life that you won’t find anywhere else.
– Ole Brunsbjerg, headmaster.

The Copenhagen Context Driven Testing meetups are becoming a tradition thanks to the work of Carsten Feilberg and Agniezka Loza. In June, I chaired a workshop in Ballerup near Copenhagen during one of the meetups. 16 testers shared ideas about values in software testing.
There are four or five basic human values which everyone shares. The good, the beautiful, the true and the just. Freedom relates to these four. We express and rate them differently and they are intrisic to us, subjective, but still shared among humans.
My personal human values shape my actions, words and thoughts, and thus also the words and expressions I use in my daily language. My language can tell you about my values and therefore something about who I am.
Workshop and procastination
In the workshop I chaired in June, I asked the participants to pick picture cards to illustrate thoughts about testing. Then they spoke about the picture and about testing. We shared our words and statements on post-it’s and I collected them.
I was busy at work after the workshop, and the box with the words ended up on my desk. Summer and vacation came, and I procastrinated opening it. One of the last days of vacation, I finally read the words on the post-it’s.
Here are the words:

Knowledge; Information; Curiosity; Exploration; Investigation; Fight :-); Courage; Confidence; Balance; Collaboration; Evolvement; Surprise; Order; Performance; Discovering stuff, that others have not (yet) discovered; beautiness. Usability (easy/better ways of using stuff). Universatility. User experience design; Good (better) end user experience; user needs; user satisfaction; Sustainability. Creativity. Responsibility. Curiosity; Easeing somebody else’s job; Striving; Alertness; Communication; Added communication; added collaboration; information sharing; Building bridges; (Make it) fun; Excellence; Any word / anything; Getting a kick; Covering / exploring; Contradictions / paradoxes; Building trust; Finding (new) ways; Getting to know; Helping; Revealing; Avoiding losses; Whole solutions; Support descisions; Transparancy; Quality; Assessing quality; Avoid scandals; Improvement; Business needs; Filling gaps; People; To spoil illusions (own and others’); Digging for something deeper; Truth; Structure; Growth; Responsibility; Team work; Exploration; Progress; Seeing/finding possibilities; Erkendelse/Erkenntnis/realisation; Business value; Honesty.

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Truth and testing
It’s interesting to note that many of the words above relate to the value ‘truth’. Testing implies couriosity, gives a kick, spoils illusions, happens through exploration etc.
I consider ‘truth’ to be the fundamental core value in testing. Truth as a term is a complex thing, but when we use words that relate to the value ‘truth’, it’s easier to see.
As a tester, I prefer things that are true and don’t accept stories that can’t be verified. I rate things that are more true than other things. For example, I tend to dislike reducing truth to numbers, and prefer a more nuanced understanding of subjects.
I do have beleifs, hyphotesis, and test ideas, but at the end of the day, the ideas only prove their worth when they have been evaluated.
More than truth?
But look again.
Many (most?) of the words deal with things that are not related to ‘truth’: Reponsibility, easening other peoples jobs, evolvement, user experiences, whole solutions, improvement, business value etc.
This reminds us that testers are not just concerned with ‘truth’, i.e. testing, but also value how testing is used and the results that the whole team or company achieves.
What does this tell me as a testing leader?
It tells me that in my leadership, I cannot only focus on testing ideas, spoiling illusions, and telling the truth if I wish to motivate and encourage our teams to work efficiently and independently doing their testing.
I have to consider how the testing contributes to achieving other goals and higher goals.
I have to consider that coorporation with colleagues work well. That the product we somehow help with is something that makes users happy. That there are bottom line results because of our testing. That disasters are prevented.
These things are not just ‘context issues’. They are core to testing leadership.
Word play
I have played with the words on the cards and come up with a mission statement for a hypothetical testing team. The mission statement somehow expresses this.
Feel free to play with the words yourself.

We are testers. We are ready to spoil illusions, both our own and others’. We have courage to do so and generally like to be surprised. So we always dig for something deeper, a deeper understanding, a realization, an ‘erkenntnis’. We get a kick when that happens. Through testing, we seek truth, but we also feel a responsibility to make our testing useful to create user friendly and whole solutions, support growth and improvement, and sustainability. Our testing thus aims to assist the creation of pleasing and aestethic solutions, to serve other peoples needs and hopes, and in general to do good.

PS: The quote from my uncle Ole Brunsbjerg at the top of this article is to remind us that there is more to life than testing. Or anything else. Life is very rich and as humans, we value all of it.