Abstracts

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an approach to communication based on the principles of nonviolence. It is not an attempt to end disagreements, but rather a method that aims to increase empathy and improve the quality of life of those who utilize the method and the people around them. It was developed by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg beginning in the 1960s and 1970s.
When I was reading a book ‘Nonviolent Communication – a language of life’ I was thinking about application of these principles in software testing. Communication is very important for testers and improving and mastering this ability could increase throughput of agile teams. I am fascinated by connecting IT world with non-IT world and I think that NVC is great example of such connection.

NVC process consists of the following:

• The concrete actions we observe that affect our well-being.
• How we feel in relation to what we observe.
• The needs, values, desires, that create our feelings.
• The concrete actions we request to enrich our lives.

In my presentation I will cover for example following topics:

• how to separate observation from evaluation in software testing. When we are discussing the possible bugs with developers, we need to clearly observe what we are seeing in the application under the test, without mixing in any evaluation of developer who produced the bug.
• how to distinguish between what we as testers feel when testing software and what we think we are, this can relate also to backlog refinement meetings when discussing stories with business people.
• explain that what other testers, developers, product owners and scrum masters do may be the stimulus of our feelings, but not the cause of our feelings as testers.
• how to address what we would like to request of others to enrich life for us. How do we express our requests so that others are more willing to respond compassionately to our needs. This covers for example discussion with DevOps and TechOps partners about the resources for our automation tests, discussion with manager about the budget for new tools for automation and manual testing, concreted discussions will be provided during the session.
• how to receive empathically when communicating with other testers and developers, why the empathy has big power

Main takeaways (lessons learned):

• Importance of communication in software testing
• Why application of Nonviolent Communication principles can improve our daily work
• How to use NVC is software testing by expressing honestly
• Improve your communication skills used in software testing by receiving empathically
• You can start using these principles immediately and get you testing performance to next level