Here are the slides for my consensus talk based on Daniel Kanheman's book Thinking fast and slow at Agile Testing days 2014. The talk focuses on learning ways to harness your “Eureka” moments and use all your thinking within the rapid pace of Agile. The agile testing community has taken note of Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1 thinking is fast, instinctive and emotional. For example, if you heard a male voice saying “I believe I am pregnant”, your brain would immediately react. If you had to multiply 42 × 13 in your head, you’d use System 2 thinking, which takes time to apply rules and reason. (See http://www.npr.org/2011/10/27/141508854/fast-and-slow-pondering-the-speed-of-thought for more). We’re most likely to default to System 1 thinking even when testing software. But won’t we risk missing some subtle issues that way? Or even the not so subtle, have you ever missed the glaringly obvious? When can and should we apply the more deliberate and logical “slow thinking” – and how do we get ourselves to do it when needed? Can we use techniques to combat inattentional bias, group hallucinations and even our own natural predisposition. This talk looks at ways to determine how to trigger system 2 thinking within the agile development process, for example using art, walking or games to generate multi-dimensional communication and engage the brain more fully. Key Learnings Awareness of the two “systems” of thinking and how they affect testing Ways to use our knowledge of thinking to improve our testing How to harness or mitigate thinking styles in given situations How to apply fast and slow thinking to “build the right thing” in a timely manner

1. The hare and the tortoise
of testing
Who will win the race?
Emma.Armstrong@red-gate.com
@EmmaATester

2. Two systems of thinking

3. System 1 Thinking

4. System 2 Thinking
27 x 45 =
c

6. Priming

7. Effects
Amazing

8. Intuition
Fabulous

9. Biases
Funny

11. Meetings

12. Critical and Creative thinking

13. Questions?
Why are the numbers laid out like this?
1,2,6
4,5,9
3,7,8

14. Books and articles
Daniel Kahneman - Thinking fast and slow
Andy Hunt - Pragmatic Thinking and Leraning
Adam Knight – The Friday Puzzle http://www.a-sisyphean-task.com/2014/05/the-friday-puzzle.html
John Stevenson - Creative and critical thinking http://steveo1967.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/creative-and-critical-thinking-and.html
http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/10-team-building-games-that-promote-critical-thinking/
http://spers.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/50-activities-for-developing-critical-thinking-skills.pdf
Images from flickr.com
Brain Power by Allan Ajfo aboutmodafinil.com
Ken Mayer
Ugly?Turkey -Tambako the jaguar
Cow - Ian Britton
A street called awesome -Selena NHB
Reliable - Todd
Child’s hand is clay - Diama Robinson
Full Halo -hmerinomx
Anchor - Plbmak
Thinking...please wait - Karola Riegle
Meeting table - mnadi
Cup Cake -Choo Yut Shing
Thinking -Karthick Ramalingam
Creative Hands-Mindy - Jeff Daly
Thank you – Avard Woolaver
Resources