1. Mind mapping as testing tool
2. nothing is impossible
3. Using visual models increades coverage and reduces time

Lena first entered the IT-industry during the last trembling years of the 20th century. She currently works with quality assurance (or assistance if the teams are agile enough) but started out as a programmer and that background can be seen a lot in her chosen methods and approaches. Asking her what she does for a living will probably cause some gritted teeth and uncomfortable silence due to her dislike of the title "Test Manager" and her constant struggle to make the teams work smoothly without her. Lena hates finding "easy" defects and loves when quality is a state of mind rather than a separate activity. Outside of work she passionately LOVES everything related to fantasy! Books, movies, anime, art, GAMES! Who needs a dining room when you can fill it with pin ball- and arcade machines?

Some years ago I faced the seemingly impossible task of verifying that a particularly evil part of code,tax calculation (Who knew there are so many ways of doing something?!) “works the same way as before“.
We needed to refactor due to a number of nasty bugs nestled deep down in giant stored procedures. Due to a very strained relationship with our users this HAD to turn out well or we would most certainly never be allowed to refactor anything again.

Without prior test activities properly documented, no requirement specs and a lot of uncertainty of what the correct behaviour was, the task looked like it could not be done. Time was scarce and information even more limited but with a little help from mind mapping I managed to step up my game and move from slow, repetitive and confused to a sleek and context-driven testing machine.

I will to take you on a journey through how we turned this mammoth of a task into success. I will show you how we chose to gather information, structure it and visualize it in order to quickly verify and feel (reasonably) confident that we covered everything important.

This session is one of three stories presented by three different people in a storytelling track.