Hiccupps

Time flies, they say. This is the 720th post on Hiccupps and I'm publishing it fifteen years after the first, to the day. I've often used blog birthdays as a chance to step back a little and reflect but fifteen feels like a big number so I thought I'd step all the way back. --00--   I use the blog as a reference, to recall what I did or what I thought, but I don't have strong memories of a lot of the material, so I decided to sample it by reading the post published closest to its  anniversary  for every year of its existence. 2011  Sign Language Phew. The first post is not too cringe and it makes a reasonable point about the audience for our work being wider than the people who we hope will pay for it. I think I've jumped to a conclusion about who made the sign though, or there was some evidence that I failed to mention in the post.  2012  Flotsam or Jetsam? Internet Explorer 6. Yikes! But I can see how I would have laughed out...

You know The Law of the Instrument in one form or another. Wikipedia attributes this version to Maslow: I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Which is insightful, but it belongs to a simpler, slower era.  Today the problem is not whether you have a range of tools. It's still less whether you know how to use them, and it's not remotely about knowing when.  No, today the problem is that we don't have to bother, and many of us don't.    I suppose it is tempting, if you have an enchanted hammer, to treat everything as if it were a  who-cares-just-hit-it-for-me. And if that's who we are now, what's happening to our craft? Image: Geronimo Giqueaux on Unsplash

Maaret Pyhäjärvi gave a talk, Exploratory Testing Reimagined , last week.  There's a  blog post  to go with it, so I won't say much on top of what's in my sketchnotes above, just pull out a few reflections. I don't have the data or wide range of experience reports that Maaret does, but my own anecdotal results from using AI tools for testing align closely with what she says in the talk. I have created skills to assist me, and my colleagues, in our testing work. For example, I used the contents of this blog and five years of test notes in my current role to distil a conversational workflow, facilitated by Claude, which runs through risk identification, test idea generation, and test mission creation. All four skills (the facilitation is its own skill) are backed by a fifth, on general testing theory and practice, and a sixth about how I like to interact with the AI: which notably includes that I want it to be concise, evidence-backed, well-structured, and critical. I st...