More than testing — Patterns

This blog post has been in the making within my mind for a couple of weeks now. The thoughts are around how there are factors that adversely impact the solution you build. They are what I would call patterns, repeated patterns of problems that occur across organisations.

Some examples I could give

• Tight deadlines causing people to rush. Thus mistakes are made (we’re human, mistakes are part of the game). As a result problems are introduced into the solution.
• A lack of communication and collaboration amongst disciplines. Therefore people are on the wrong page and building the wrong thing, testing the wrong thing or taking much longer than anticipated.
• Ineffective meetings like sprint refinements. This results in requirements that are not clear, not testable and even gaps. Thus introducing problems into your solution.
• A lack of understanding about what testing is about, which results in pushes to reduce the testing. Thus resulting in not discovering problems and then resulting in finding the problems in production for the first time.

I want to see more talk about patterns. Recognising them and doing something about it to build fantastic products!

Perhaps there’s value in brainstorming what these patterns may be. Creating a list of patterns. Then finding a way to group them. Once we have a list of these patterns, the next conversation can be about, What do we do about them?