While I’ve been in the software testing industry for twenty years, I’ve only been vegan for a few years. Veganism is a movement around minimizing harm to our fellow human and non-human animals with compassion at its core, and I think of it as being built on three main pillars, viz. ethics, the environment, and health.
I will discuss how being vegan has strong parallels with being a software tester in terms of the three pillars of veganism, the similar challenges involved in changing the mindsets of others – and also the need to frequently justify one’s own beliefs!
Be prepared to learn something about veganism and maybe having some long-held assumptions challenged, but also expect to take away some ideas for changing hearts and minds in your life as a tester.
Ethics
At its heart, veganism is an ethical principle designed to reduce – to the greatest extent possible – the suffering we cause to other human and non-human animals. It is unfortunate that the movement is seen as “radical” or “militant” when it essentially asks nothing more of us than to not cause unnecessary suffering. It feels to me like the animal rights movement is on the rise, just as the human rights movement was through the 1800s and 1900s.
With ethics being at the core of veganism, they also need to be at the core of software testing. Doing the right thing is the right thing to do and our job as testers often involves the relay of bad or unpopular information. As algorithms take over so many decision-making processes in the modern world, our dependency on the developers writing these algorithms to do the right thing only increases. The Volkswagen “dieselgate”[1] scandal is an example of where many people involved with the development of the “defeat devices” (possibly including both software developers and testers) didn’t speak up enough to stop these devices going into the public domain and potentially causing harm to so many people.
Since we have now acknowledged as a society that humans have the right to live a life free from unnecessary suffering and so on, organizations employing testers have an obligation to engage them in intellectually challenging work fit for humans to invest their valuable lives in. Putting intelligent humans into roles where they are expected to mimic the actions of machines (e.g. executing step-by-step detailed test cases) is, to me at least, unethical.
Environment
According to a recent study by the University of Oxford[2], the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions is the animal agriculture industry, with the bulk of these emissions emanating from factory farms. This significant contribution to one of our planet’s most pressing problems is rarely acknowledged or publicly discussed, especially by governments. Our disregard for the environment is bad for the animals and bad for humans. It’s not too much of a stretch to view factory farming and so-called “factory testing” in similar lights. The mechanistic dogma of factory testing is bad for our business, yet remains for many organizations their default position and unquestioned “best practice” approach to software testing, despite the evidence of its inefficiencies.
The animal agriculture business is also the largest contributor to deforestation, either to create pasture for grazing or to grow soy beans or grain to feed to animals. Animals are very inefficient in their conversion of food and water into the products eaten by humans (in terms of calories and protein[3]), so we could easily enormously reduce the amount of deforestation while at the same time providing more food for humans to eat directly. The dominant ideology around consuming animal products again makes this a conversation rarely heard. We could similarly cut out the inefficiencies in a large proportion of the world’s software testing industry by removing the “middle man” of excessive documentation. I hoped that the rise in popularity of more agile approaches to software development would spell the end of heavyweight “testing processes” in which we spend more time writing about the testing we might do and less time actually interacting with the software to see what it does do and assessing whether that’s what we wanted. The dominant ideology around software testing – very successfully promoted by organizations like the ISTQB – still manages to push challenges to these approaches to the fringes, however, and talks of detractors as radical or even unprofessional.
Health
Credible studies[4] point to the fact that reducing animal products in the human diet (or, better, eliminating them altogether) leads to improved long-term health outcomes. A wholefood plant-based diet appears to be optimal for human health, both in terms of physical and mental wellbeing.
It’s good to see some important aspects of self-care entering the conversation in the IT community, such as practicing mindfulness and getting adequate sleep. The mythology around “all nighters” and hero efforts popularized in the IT community thankfully seems to be unravelling as we realize the importance of physical and mental wellbeing when it comes to our ability to perform well in our work settings. Testers have often borne the brunt of last-minute hero efforts to get releases out and I’m encouraged by the changes I see in our industry to a mindset of the whole development team being responsible for the quality of deliverables, a positive outcome from the move to more agile approaches perhaps.
The same old questions, time and time again
One of the challenges of being vegan is the fact that everyone suddenly becomes an expert on nutrition to explain why it is unhealthy to not consume animal products. The questions are surprisingly similar from many different people and can be seen in the many online materials from vegan bloggers and influencers. The most common question is probably “where do you get your protein?”, reflecting both a modern obsession over protein intake (it’s almost impossible to be protein deficient when consuming an average amount of calories) and also poor nutritional advice from doctors, government bodies, and mainstream media. It’s worth remembering that your typical GP receives only a few hours of nutritional training during their time at medical school, while government policy is heavily influenced by lobbying from big agriculture and mainstream media relies heavily on advertising revenues from the animal agriculture industry. The animals consumed by humans as meat get their protein from eating plants, just like humans can.
Another common question is “What about vitamin B12?” and, yes, most vegans will supplement with (vegan-sourced) B12. What most people don’t realize is that factory farmed animals are supplemented with B12 so vegans are simply cutting out the middle man (or, rather, middle animal). Animals are not some magic B12 producing machine, B12 comes naturally from bacteria in soil and hence the need for supplementation in animals now raised in such unnatural conditions.
The animal agriculture industry relies on this marketing and mythology, as well as the general lack of questioning about what is seen as the norm in consuming animal products. The same applies to the software testing industry where big players and repeated mythology have created such a dominant world view of testing that it goes unquestioned by so many. If you go against the grain in this industry (say, aligning yourself with the context-driven testing “school”, as I have chosen to do), you can expect some of these common questions:
- How do you measure coverage?
- How can you test without test cases?
- What percentage of your testing is automated?
- Why do you focus so much on semantics (like “testing” and “checking”)?
Software testing is also one of the few specialties I’ve seen in the IT industry in which people outside of the specialty believe and openly express that they know how to do it well, despite having little or no experience of actually performing good testing. The ongoing misapprehension that testing is somehow “easy” or lesser than other software development specialties is something we should all counter whenever we have the opportunity – software testing is a professional, cognitive activity that requires skills including – but not limited to – critical thinking, analysis, attention to detail, and the ability to both focus and defocus. Let’s not devalue ourselves as good testers by not speaking up for our craft! Knowing how to respond well to the common questions is a good place to start.
Hello old friend, confirmation bias!
When it comes to cognitive biases, one of the most common I’ve witnessed is “confirmation bias”, especially when talking about food. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favour and recall information in a way that confirms your pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. Talking specifically in the context of the food we eat, everyone is looking for good news about their bad habits so any “research” that suggests eating meat, eggs, dairy products, chocolate, etc. is actually good for you gets big press and plenty of clicks. (One trick is to “follow the money” when it comes to research articles like this, as funding from big agriculture invariably can be found somewhere behind them, in my experience.) It should come as no surprise that the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary doesn’t warrant the same attention!
I see the same confirmation bias being displayed by many in the testing community, with big differences of opinion between the so-called “schools of testing”[5] and a lack of willingness to even consider the ideas from one school within the others. Even when credible experience reports[6] have been published around the poor efficacy of a test case-based approach to testing, for example, there is no significant shift away from what I’d call “traditional” approaches to testing in many large organizations and testing outsourcing service providers.
To counter confirmation bias when trying to change the mindset of testers, it’s worth looking at the very different approaches taken by different activists in the vegan movement. I was first introduced to the Socratic Method when I took Michael Bolton’s Rapid Software Testing course back in 2007 and it’s been a powerful tool for fostering critical thinking in my work since then. Many vegan activists also use the Socratic Method to help non-vegans explore their logical inconsistencies, but their approach to using it varies widely. A well-known Australian activist, Joey Carbstrong[7], pulls no punches with his somewhat “in your face” in style, whereas the high-profile UK activist Earthling Ed[8] uses a gentler approach to achieve similar results. These stylistic differences remind me of those I’ve personally experienced by attending Rapid Software Testing delivered by Michael Bolton and, later, with James Bach. I strongly believe in the power of the Socratic Method in terms of fostering critical thinking skills and it’s a powerful approach to use when confronted by those who doubt or disregard your preferred approach to testing based on little but their own confirmation bias.
Time for dessert!
Any belief or action that doesn’t conform to the mainstream narrative or paradigm causes people to become defensive. Just as humans consuming animal products is seen as natural, normal and necessary[9] (when it is demonstrably none of those), a departure from the norms of the well-peddled testing methodologies is likely to result in you being questioned, criticized and feeling the need to justify your own beliefs. I would encourage you to navigate your own path, be well informed and find approaches and techniques that work well in your context, then advocate for your good ideas via respectful dialogue and use of the Socratic Method.
And, yes, even vegans get to eat yummy desserts! I hope you’ve learned a little more about veganism and maybe I’ve helped to dispel a few myths around it – maybe try that vegan option the next time you go out for a meal or check out one of the many vegan activists[7,8,10,11s] spreading the word about veganism.
References
[1] Volkswagen “dieselgate”: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/what-is-the-volkswagen-dieselgate-emissions-scandal
[2] “Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers”, Science Volume 360, Issue 6392, 1st June 2018: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6392/987
[3] “Energy and protein feed-to-food conversion efficiencies in the US and potential food security gains from dietary changes” (A Shepon, G Eshel, E Noor and R Milo), Environmental Research Letters Volume 11, Number 10, 4th October 2016: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/10/105002
[4] Examples from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (US): https://www.pcrm.org/clinical-research
[5] “Four Schools of Testing” (Bret Pettichord), Workshop on Teaching Software Testing, Florida Tech, February 2003: http://www.testingeducation.org/conference/wtst_pettichord_FSofST2.pdf
[6] “Test Cases Are Not Testing” (James Bach & Aaron Hodder), Testing Trapeze magazine, February 2015: https://www.satisfice.com/download/test-cases-are-not-testing
[7] Joey Carbstrong https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCG6usHVNuRbexyisxE27nDw
[8] Earthling Ed https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVRrGAcUc7cblUzOhI1KfFg/videos
[9] “Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism” (Melanie Joy): https://www.carnism.org/
[10] That Vegan Couple https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV8d4At_1yUUgpsnqyDchrw
[11] Mic The Vegan https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGJq0eQZoFSwgcqgxIE9MHw/videos
Rockin' and Testing All Over The World 