Page - 201 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

The Future of Testing 201 requirementsarewrittendown(inordertogetabettersharedunderstandingofwhat needs tobebuilt and tested by thedevelopment team).Asoftware tester is required tounderstandwhatthebusinessistalkingaboutbutshouldalsobeabletosparwitha developeronhowtoimplementsomecodeandhowtoautomatethetests thatshould check if thecode is actuallyworking.Thereforea software tester in2028mightnot evenbe ‘just’ a software tester. The role mightbe moreaboutbeing the linkingpin betweenbusiness and IT and being the quality conscienceof the entire BizDevOps team. This is something entirely different than back in the days. In 1998–2008 everyone with some analytical skills could become a software tester. If you failed at beinga goodsoftwaredeveloper,youcould still make a careermove to software testing.But in theupcoming10years therolecurrentsoftware testersoccupymight even become the most challenging role within software development. Being the quality conscience, you should always be adapting yourself to new realities. You shouldconstantlybe changingstrategiesandalways keep track of thingschanging. Both froma businessperspectiveanda technicalperspective. And even though this may sound like a lot of fun to many people, changing is actually the hardest thing to do for a human being. Simply put, our brains aren’t built for coping with change. We were built to be organized, to find structure and patterns.To do thingsexactly like we always did them.To understand thiswe need to look a bit further back than 1998. More than 10,000 years ago we humanswere still hunter-gatherers.The only thing we needed to worry about was surviving and thebestwaytodothatwastofollowstrictpatterns.Weoftenwenttothesameplaces to hunt or gather food and we could trust our brain would warn us if anything was out of the ordinary.Because that’show thehumanbrain hasdeveloped. It’s always more or less in a relax mode, until something changes, when a chemical called cortisol is released, also known as the stress hormone. It induces a state known as the fight-or-flight reflex. Adrenaline starts pumping,our field of vision narrows, muscles contract. We get hyper-focussedon the one thing that has changed. Was it a threat?A predator?Anenemy?Someother formofdanger? Nowadays we’re working in our twenty-first century offices, but our brains are still the same as they were 10,000 years ago. They haven’t yet adapted to this new environment.Evolution doesn’t like to be rushed. So, even though we might think we embrace change. Even though we think constant change makes our day-to-day work more fun. Our brainsdon’t like it at all! Knowing this, it’s no wonderpeople on theworkfloorareclinging tooldpatterns.There is a reasonwe oftenstill prefer tohaveastructuredWaysofWorking,preferablydocumentedinsomehandyExcel checklist . . . There’sa reasonwemayfeel lost when thingsall of a suddenchange when we’re in the middle of something. The Agile way of working is all about adapting to change. But we should be more aware that this is actually something we humans aren’t really good at! (And if any reader is now shaking his/her head mumbling‘no,no,no, thatdoesn’tapply tome!’, trustme: it applies toyouaswell. It’s simplebiology! [1,2]). So, will we be abandoning the Agile way of working in 2028? I don’t think so. However, I do suspect we will change it quite a bit. When looking at software developmentteamsIseealotofdevelopersstrugglingwithall theseAgilemeetings,