Focus time, secret weapon of Quality Engineering
Testing is a series of controlled experiments and uncontrolled events. Personal style is personal development, and it can help take you to the next level. You’re often most creative when you’re the least productive.
Ideation. There is no need debating the boundary between tests. Stop thinking in terms of unit tests, integration tests, UI tests and end-to-end tests. Get creative and identify the qualities of your tests regardless their pyramid level instead.
Creativity can be triggered either by making unexpected connections or getting knowledge and experience. The connection between these is triggered by doing something unrelated, something distracting. Like socializing. It may seem unproductive, but it is not. While your conscious mind is distracted, your subconscious will continue working, processing your knowledge until you have a moment of clarity. Eureka!
“Hey, that’s interesting!”
Focus time. Focus hours are uninterrupted stretches of time in your day to get your most important work done. We test our ability to design the tests, to perform them, and observe the outcome. Perhaps it’s this “downtime” that makes some even more efficient, and filling the workday with busywork could negatively impact workflow. If you’re able to get your necessary work done well, the amount of time you spend isn’t an indicator of your productivity.
Subtle “switching” costs cuts efficiency and raises risk. Doing more than one complex task has an impact on productivity. Turns out, the lack of focus and higher likelihood of making mistakes when multitasking is not only ineffective and unproductive. Mental overload can result in catastrophe.
The author wishes to help the development environment hold the weather and reduce the number of disappointments experienced by millions of people in everyday life.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
