What’s The Problem?

Most of the time, our primary responsibility as testers is to find problems. But have we paused to consider what a problem is?

In this workshop, we'll examine and map our ideas about problems. What constitutes a problem, and how do we recognize it? What are the factors or dimensions of a problem? How do we describe them? Who gets to decide whether something is a problem, why it's a problem, or whether it's a problem that matters? What happens with a problem once we've recognized it?

The workshop may include testing of an application, mind-mapping, discussion, or role-playing simulations to probe the social, political, and emotional dimensions of declaring, evaluating, and resolving problems.