Testing Peers
Testing Peers is a growing community of ~60 peers in testing, software quality, agility, test leadership, engineering management, and broader software development. We’re united by a shared goal: to drive quality in everything we do within our workplaces and beyond. Through collaboration, accountability, and mutual support, we strive to elevate one another both professionally and personally.
The Testing Peers podcast is now expanding beyond its original four hosts, David Maynard, Chris Armstrong, Russell Craxford and Simon Prior, striving to represent the voices of a diverse and thriving community. Our inaugural in-person conference, PeersCon, launched in Nottingham in March 2024 and will return in March 2025, further solidifying Testing Peers as a not-for-profit, by testers, for testers initiative.
Testing Peers
Learning Fast
Thanks for joining us for episode 114 of the Testing Peers podcast.
This time, Ben Dowen joins Russell, David and Chris as we dive into the topic of learning fast (as a different take on failing fast).
For this episode's banter, Ben asks the group about what their reasons to be cheerful are. A lot of learning, project closing and summer time activities (or lack of activities) ahead!
The Peers then dive into the main topic. Russell explains the power of the language and cognitive biases around failure, and why he therefore opts for learning fast rather than failing fast.
Russell quotes Thomas Edison:
I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
Ben talks about the joys as a tester of exploration and the Peers talk about how things look and feel for those of us who naturally work well in environments where everything is not and cannot be known up front.
Shorter feedback loops, humility, recognition, collaboration and exploration are further pressed into.
But what do you do with that learning? Can you change, react, be resilient, agile? How can that information work within constraints, contracts and various contexts? What are the causes and effects?
We talk about documentation, comments and the value they also provide.
Russell mentions the game Testing Jenga.
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