Telling our testing stories – handout Isabel Evans, May 2016 Abstract Our messages are not heard or are misinterpreted. Sometimes we do not hear the messages other people need to tell us. Our natural abilities at storytelling and at appreciating the stories others tell us can be crushed under the weight of the ways we are expected to plan, report and communicate about testing and quality. We have a natural ability to tell stories and a natural delight in narrative, which help us communicate about testing and quality to others in our organisations. We look at why and how we tell stories in a way that is appealing to our audience. That means thinking about the role of oral, written and pictorial representations of testing stories, using the analogies of novels, short stories, picture books, poems and songs. You need a variety of story formats to work best for your testing messages and you need to know how to adapt your testing stories to your audience. We also examine how we can better listen to other people’s stories about their parts of the project, about quality and about testing, and how we need to adapt our listening style to different storytellers when we are the audience. Purpose of this handout This handout provides the slides plus notes so that you can follow up the presentation with further investigation and practice after the event. Story telling takes practice – whether words, music, painting, songs, embroideries – all need practice to understand how to design, make and execute the story. Listening also improves with practice. In the slides I will show you examples, including poems, embroideries and pictures. I’ll mention different story tellers and stories. I’ll mention some good listeners and some not so good listeners. In this handout you’ll find the references to websites, twitter accounts, books and other sources that may be useful for you to follow up. ©Isabel Evans 2015 Telling our testing stories Page 1 of 25 Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 1 Purpose of this handout.......................................................................................................................... 1 Introductory slides .................................................................................................................................. 3 Slide 3 Story telling without words ......................................................................................................... 4 Slide 4 Story tellers ................................................................................................................................. 5 Slide 5 Reasons to write .......................................................................................................................... 6 Slide 6 Starting your story ....................................................................................................................... 7 Slide 7 Headlines ..................................................................................................................................... 9 Slide 8 Brevity is good ........................................................................................................................... 10 Slide 9 Computer Haiku ........................................................................................................................ 11 Slide 10 Testing Haiku…? ...................................................................................................................... 11 Slide 11 Diagrams .................................................................................................................................. 12 Slide 12 The story of the 1000 night and 1 night .................................................................................. 13 Slide 13Long term planning and reporting ........................................................................................... 14 Slide 14 1000 nights and 1 night – a happy ending? ............................................................................ 16 Slide 15 The story of the severed head ................................................................................................. 17 Slide 16 Keeping our stories relevant and timely ................................................................................. 19 Slide 17 The Grateful Beasts ................................................................................................................. 20 Slide 18 Listening and reacting to people ............................................................................................. 21 Slide 19 Endings .................................................................................................................................... 22 Slide 20 Begin at the beginning, go on until the end: then stop .......................................................... 23 References and sources ........................................................................................................................ 24 Thanks and acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ 25 ©Isabel Evans 2015 Telling our testing stories Page 2 of 25 Introductory slides The images on the slides are a traditional Hungarian embroidery in cross stitch and a modern Hungarian embroidery. “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” • About stories • Who tells stories and who listens? • Beginnings and headlines • Brevity (haiku and diagrams) • Serials and endings • Telling stories and listening – Scheherazade: the 1000 nights and 1 night – The Severed Head – The Grateful Beasts • I’m going to tell you some stories • You are going to think about testing while you listen… Quote: The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. 'Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?' he asked. 'Begin at the beginning,' the King said gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll ©Isabel Evans 2015 Telling our testing stories Page 3 of 25 Slide 3 Story telling without words Story telling – without words You will find this experiment described and animated on the internet at various sites. It demonstrates that for many people watching an animation or looking at an abstract shape, one tells oneself a story or assigns more meaning and character to the shapes than they actually have. Different people will interpret the animations in different ways. This is sometimes known as the Michotte effect, after the Belgian psychologist who researched and wrote about perceptions of causality. Also referenced here is a web article about similar work done in the 1940’s by experimental psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel. I first heard about the Michotte effect in a workshop run by New Zealand expert tester Matt Mansell, which I recommend: Matt Mansell: “Heuristics, bias and critical thinking in testing”. See https://nz.linkedin.com/in/matthewmansell In the same way, an artist will try to convey a message in a picture using as few lines as possible – letting the viewer of the picture do the work. You can look at variants of the animation and explanations of the experiment on the web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VTNmLt7QX8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_jKNlC2YKo http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/animating-anthropomorphism- giving-minds-to-geometric-shapes-video/ ©Isabel Evans 2015 Telling our testing stories Page 4 of 25 Slide 4 Story tellers Notice the contrast in style and subject of the two embroidery designs – floral versus geometric. Nobel Prize for Literature winners include: Toni Morrison, Sinclair Lewis, T S Elliot, Pearl Buck, Eugene O’Neill, Saul Bellow, Gabriela Mistral, Bertrand Russell, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Alice Munroe, Doris Lessing. Each country has its own story tellers (the word stream on the slide this includes Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, J D Salinger, Henry James, F Scott Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Foster Wallace, Washington Irvine, Emily Dickinson, Truman Capote, Steven King, James Fenimore Cooper, John Steinbeck, Phil Roth, Ray Bradbury, Willa Cather, Arthur Miller, Alice Walker, Margaret Attwood, James Thurber, Malory, Dickens, Shakespeare, Walter de la Mare, E Nesbit, Terry Pratchett, Isaac Asimov, Enid Blyton, Ian Rankin, Lewis Carroll, J R R Tolkien, Jane Austen) and epic stories such as the Mabinogion (Wales), and the Edda (Iceland). But we are story tellers too – every one of us, and we all listen to stories. The author Terry Pratchett once said that humans should be called the story telling ape (Pan narrans) not the wise man (Homo sapiens). For a presentation that includes an analysis of the change between oral and written traditions to ɐʌ: Why we have it backwards” by Shmuel Gershonןtransmit information see, for example, “ǝn (http://testing.gershon.info). Discussions with Shmuel and Julian Harty (http://blog.bettersoftwaretesting.com) contributed to this presentation. Also see Rob Sabourin’s cartoon/picture book “I am a bug” for a simple explanation of testing and Karen Johnson’s work on testing storytelling: http://astoriedcareer.com/karen_johnson_qa.html DOUGLAS J. PENICK on http://levekunst.com/for-scheherazade/: “For Scheherazade knew a great truth: the telling and the hearing of stories, the exchange of tales and