Quite a few years ago I was going through a tough time and was referred to “Cognitive Behaviour Therapy” (CBT). Whilst it wasn’t what I needed at the time, it was useful for helping me correct some of my negative behaviours or reactions.
Recently when working my way through MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC), one of the lessons was on thought techniques and one idea relating to cognitive biases was “Why was that my initial thought?”. This reminded me of the questions that I used to ask during my CBT exercises so I thought I’d share some here as thought exercises with testing.
Worry Explorations to tap into a risk
If you have a concern about a risk, perhaps try a Worry Exploration:
- What is a risk that you are worried about?
- What are some of the clues that your risk might come true?
- How can you tell whether it might come true?
- If your risk does come true:
- What will happen?
- Do you know how to respond?
- What can you do to mitigate this?
(this is slightly varied from the actual exercise)
Attribution Styles to categorise challenges
Have you had a bad experience? Perhaps that bug escaping is getting to you? We can reflect using Attribution Styles.
- Describe the event
- Is this a positive or negative event?
- What is the reason you give for this?
- Is it a permanent or temporary reason?
- Is the reason internal (about you) or external?
- Is this a general reason or a very specific reason for the particular event?
The idea here is that for negative events we want to understand that bad things that happen tend to be temporary, external and specific (TES). Things that are Permanent, Internal and General (PIG) need looking at.
Taking this further, could we use this with RCA findings? In particular a PIG issue is something we need to address within the team as they are likely to bite us again. PEG/PES/TEG issues may need escalating but something that is TIS, let’s not overly dwell on it.
Negative Thought Records to challenge assumptions
Let’s say there’s an assumption being made and you are worried about it. Asking the following questions will help us challenge the assumption:
- What possible thinking error could be in the assumption?
- Black and White
- Jumping to Conclusions
- Overgeneralising
- Should statements
- What is the evidence for this assumption being true?
- What is the evidence against this assumption being true?
- What are alternatives that could be true?
- Do I still believe the assumption to be correct?
- If not, what actions can I take?
I made a small app to record my CBT thoughts. I wonder whether it would be worth modifying to have a tester version? Maybe adding in other things like 5 Whys, 5W & 1H, SFDIPOT and other heuristics.