There are always options. But when making business and IT change, we often forget to consider them, to the detriment of the overall outcome. The reason for this is the way the human mind processes ideas, and dates back to the cognitive revolution around 70,000 years ago. In this session you will learn: - How humans have ideas and make decisions - Why considering options is so powerful, and yet so hard - How to overcome these difficulties - a structured, yet lightweight, approach that I like so much I decided to give it a name

The term 'Quality Assurance' has a controversial reputation within the testing community - quality is subjective, so it cannot be assured, although it can be assessed, analysed, advocated for, questioned or improved. However it's also arguable that 'Testing' does not fully describe what modern testers do and the impact they can have on project success. Could there be a better label for the role that QA/Testing professionals perform in an agile context? In this talk, James will discuss the limitations of both 'QA' and 'Testing' as labels, as well as previous attempts to define them. He will also explore the many ways that QAs/Testers in agile teams use their time and skills to help ensure project success and meaningful quality, and situations where our role overlaps with others. Attendees will be invited to contribute to the discussion and suggest possible alternative labels to 'QA' and 'Testing'.