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SubconsciousRequirements:TheFright of EveryTester HansvanLoenhoud Abstract Subconscious requirements are requirements that stakeholders do not explicitly ask for, but still expect to be present in a system. Such requirements are problematic to testers as they will easily be overlooked and not be included in the specifications and thereforemay not be tested at all. Over time, less notable (non-) functional requirements tend to end up as subconscious. The development of ever more complex IT solutions adds to the occurrence of subconscious requirements. They do need to be tested, as ignoring them will lead to expensive rework or rejection. Due to the lack of specifications, tests can only rely on experience- based techniques. To acquire the necessary experience, testers can turn to proven techniquesfromthe requirementsengineeringdiscipline. Keywords Software testing · Softwarequality · Subconsciousrequirements · Software tester 1 Introduction As testers, we all have the same experience once in a while: a few days after the go-live of a new release, a user comes up with a serious bug. Usually, it is not about the core functionality, because everything works fine there, but more likely an issue on non-functionals like usability, security,or performance.That mayseem less important, but in fact such issues can be quite nasty, difficult and expensive to solve.Andthen, theprojectmanagercomestoyourdeskandasks:“Whydidn’tyou find this bug in your tests? You spent more than xxx hours on testing and still the #!@! thinghasbugs in it!!!” If you are a beginner in testing, you turn red in the face, try to hide under your desk and consider looking for another job. If you are an experienced tester, you remain calm, look the project manager right into her eyes and say: “Nobody told H.van Loenhoud Taraxacum, Kockengen, Utrecht, The Netherlands ©The Author(s) 2020 S.Goericke (ed.), The Future of Software QualityAssurance, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29509-7_16 207