As a tester, I don’t break your code, I break your *illusions* about the code. And illusions come in many forms. Illusions may be about the code doing what it’s supposed to; about the product doing what it would need to; about your process being able to deliver with change in mind; people having the skills to deliver well and about the business growing with uninformed risks on the product and the business model around it. 

This talk goes through examples of illusions that need to be broken and skills that you need to build to break them. As a tester, you may have these skills but use them on a scale smaller than their potential. Testing is not just the technical checks but more relevantly it’s about discovering information about threats to value you’re trying to create.

We will address:

• Types of illusions with examples grounded in the speakers 25 years of hands-on experience as a tester
• How skills to breaking basic software illusions enable breaking software illusions on organizational scale
• Hierarchy of disillusionment: how building the right things precedes building things right