Systems Thinking and More

I pub­lish a biweek­ly newslet­ter for the QE orga­ni­za­tion at my com­pa­ny, and I thought I’d start shar­ing some of what I have there. This edi­tion is about sys­tems think­ing, as well as some oth­er stuff.

Always With the Learning

Kon­stan­ti­nos Kon­stan­ta­kopou­los wrote about sys­tems think­ing and automa­tion for the Min­istry of Test­ing. Short read with some good insights.

James Thomas wrote in his blog about a week in his life as a soft­ware tester where he used sys­tems think­ing to ana­lyze a sys­tem before it exist­ed.

Philip­pa Jen­nings appeared on the Qual­i­ty Talks pod­cast with Stu Day to talk about sys­tems think­ing. It’s a pret­ty dense pod­cast but well worth the lis­ten. She talks about the sys­tems that build our soft­ware, not just about soft­ware sys­tems them­selves.

Something to Try

To go with the theme of sys­tems think­ing this edi­tion, try your hand at Ruth Malan’s Sys­tems See­ing Jour­nal. It real­ly gets your brain going with see­ing sys­tems in a dif­fer­ent way.

And if you’re look­ing for books to read about sys­tems think­ing, the Min­istry of Test­ing has a great book list!

Memesis

To com­ple­ment Philip­pa Jen­nings’ appear­ance on the pod­cast, here’s the meme she men­tioned!

Get That Brain Moving

For our lat­est com­mu­ni­ty event, we dis­cussed No Vehi­cles in the Park! You can go through the exer­cise for your­self here.

All the Acronyms (FYI/ICYMI)

I appeared on the Test­ing Peers pod­cast to talk about chang­ing things in an orga­ni­za­tion for the bet­ter. It was a love­ly con­ver­sa­tion. Lis­ten here.

Tan­vi Mit­tal has writ­ten about the shift from man­u­al to auto­mat­ed tester, as well as pro­vid­ed a great guide for test­ing AI sys­tems. Get both from her Github repo.