Expand your effectiveness by learning to take multiple perspectives. This expands the number of possible solutions and options you have. In testing, it will allow you to generate more test cases and possible ways to find problems. When problem solving it can open up new paths to different solutions.

For example, with software testing, one of the basic skills is to be able to generate a list of things to test (test cases). Most people can look at the straight forward functionality presented and figure out combinations of things to test based on the spelled out functionality. If you start looking at it from other angles you can find more.

From a technological perspective what technologies were used? For example knowing that it is a web application backed by a SQL database, that uses HTML and JavaScript on the front end opens up a set of things that could have been overlooked. If you put SQL into text entry fields does it get processes (SQL Injection). If you put characters that have special meaning in HTML into your text inputs, are they handled appropriately?

From a business perspective does the functionality fulfill the business needs of earning money at reasonable cost. If it costs money every time a particular service is called, or if you are not managing your machine instances in the cloud for cost, are you best serving your business? Do the features line up with marketing promises to customers? Are there competitors that you need to differentiate from, or match capabilities with? Will a feature make the business more likely to earn more or less money?

From the customer perspective, does the software allow you to accomplish the tasks you want to with the software? How hard it is to accomplish common tasks? What is going to annoy you? What is going to delight you?

From a psychological perspective, what people were involved in building the software? What are their blind spots? What mistakes do they tend to make? How do they approach problems?

There are more perspectives to take. By going deeper, beyond the first level of the obvious, you can more quickly identify problems, and consider additional solutions.

Key Point

  • Being able to take multiple perspectives expands your effectiveness, by expanding the problem solving approaches available.