Question Askers What are the most powerful questions you can ask?

As testers and agile practitioners, asking questions is part of our job. This talk introduces new types of questions we can ask to become better in our roles and in our lives.

Asking questions is one of the most important skills we have in our role as testers. It’s also one of the fundamental premises of agile in the form of experiments and feedback. I walk through life with the mindset of a tester, wondering, being curious and asking questions. “What happens if” has been a trusty guide for me. I will never stop advocating for questions about our projects, risks, test ideas, pipelines and features. And yet, many of us are aware of Gerry Weinberg’s second law of consulting: “No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem”. Over the last few years, I’ve been discovering questions that have helped me to discover how I myself contribute to being part of the complexity of people problems – and that help me to understand the other people I’m communicating with. These questions are powerful. They’re personal. And they’re sometimes uncomfortable. And yet, learning to ask them of ourselves, and – in the right circumstances – of others, leads to incredible improvements. In everyday conversations, in stress-levels and in team culture. Which ultimately leads to better quality – for multiple aspects. In this keynote I’ll share stories how I learned to ask (and answer!) questions such as “what are my needs and values?”, “what made me angry just then?” and “what are the actual facts?”, and what the effects have been. You’ll take away some of the questions that might be helpful to you, and know how to keep exploring them on your own and with the help of others.