Part of working with software development teams is teaching others about the risks inherent in software development. What I have found successful in teaching is to give learners activities to learn the material and apply it.
Part of the testing role is sharing what it is to different parts of the business. As well as for teams that do not have a tester sharing the techniques to open up a testing mindset.
This technique is called the Gradual Release of Responsibility or Explicit Instruction. It is composed of
- I do (Model the desired outcome)
- We do (Everyone does the activity)
- You do (Learners do the activity)
It can also be combined with Think-Pair-Share activities as well.
When you are teaching new material to people try to incorporate aspects of the different learning styles into your activities and lecture.
This led to the creation of a workshop based on the content and material that my team learned from our wonderful trainer Michael Bolton of the Rapid Software Testing content. My colleague, Joel, and I attempted to boil down the content into an hour long workshop to share with our developers lacking a tester.
The content of the mind map comes from Chapter 17 of Kam Knight's book on Mind Mapping
Latest comments (2)
This is an awesome technique. Have you taught at General Assembly by any chance? They used the same exact language in my onboarding!
I updated the article with some references but a lot of the terminology comes from pedagogical research especially from Robert J. Marzano. The content of the image comes from a book on using mind maps for teaching.