Treat your testing people as knowledge workers, not rote industrial resources. The later is a spiral to the lowest value, the former is about giving the business valuable knowledge. A modern tester is a knowledge worker – whose prime area is finding information, filtering information, relating information and presenting information. It is a non-linear process, that requires a touch of both creativity and consideration.
The best testing tool is the brain, and the knowledge worker ponder the problems both consciously and unconsciously. They can work without using the hands or legs, but not with a simple headache. It takes a lot of thinking and collaboration with the stakeholders to identify what questions about the product has value to the business. The (context-driven) knowledge focused tester focus both that it works, and that it adds value to the business.
The business focus are far from the classic mindset of testing established around the millennial (2000). where testing is about finding defects and going through the motion of deriving test cases from specifications. – I know I’ve been there. That era is long gone, even dead at some time to Whitaker and Alberto Savoia. Be provoked or even insulted, but it’s the future.
But wake up – it’s not where the testing world is today. The old tools of design techniques and coverage metrics makes less and less sense to the business. They are old-school and classic approaches, in the not so cool way. The cool kids on the block are poppin’ tags – getting new stuff, sharing and exploring. They know that change is the new normal and that what works in one situation doesn’t work in another. Their primary concern and focus is getting knowledge to the decision makers. They are the knowledge workers
Complexity is a Matter of Perspective 
Thanks Jesper for making this point loud and clear. I’m so obsessed with the notion of “Knowledge Worker” that my blog’s name is “Knowledge Tester” with a mission to equip Testers with the knowledge they need to do their work. And part of that is collaborating/sharing/exploring as you mentioned.
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[…] me that they are stuck in the testing world of 10 years ago. Standing still and not seeing that Testers are Knowledge Workers – not workers of producing artifacts. It is much more important to see beyond the […]
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[…] way to collaborate in a team is to achieve shared knowledge together. An example of this is the online activity of “30 days of testing” that The […]
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[…] Recently at UKSTAR 2018 Simon Prior talked about his investigation into University programs and their rare courses in testing. This lead to his twitter discussion under the tag: #makeAtester where the top responses of skills required was curiosity. Quite in line with the State of Testing Survey 2017 that lists key communication skills as most looked for when hiring for testing roles. Both surveys establish that testers are knowledge works. […]
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[…] of the key skills of a knowledge worker – and testing people are knowledge workers – is to imagine that things can be different. I have written previously how to recruit for […]
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