Welcome to Software Testing Unleashed, the podcast for testers, developers and software makers who live quality as an attitude. Get fresh ideas and sharp insights to grow your mindset, to learn new methods and to drive real change in how we build software. Better software and better teams for a better world. Hi, I'm Richie, software quality coach, keynote speaker, and author. My guest today is Barış Sarıalioğlu. Baris has more than 20 years of experience in IT and software engineering.
He's an expert in digital transformation, agility, AI, software development and testing. He has led global teams across industries like telecom, banking, aviation, defense and e-commerce and he has spoken at over 100 conferences worldwide. His work connects leadership, innovation and technology to create real impact. In this episode we talked about a very specific topic. We talked about testing as both art and science, inspired by
Leonardo da Vinci. What if da Vinci had been a tester? How would curiosity, observation, and experimentation shape our work today? Why can a painting like the Mona Lisa teach us more about uncertainty than a hundred pages of test reports? And why do we need to embrace imperfection instead of chasing perfection? We explored how testers can balance logic with creativity, with artful storytelling makes test results more powerful and why simplicity is often the highest form of quality.
You will hear how combine engineering with empathy to create impact that goes beyond bugs and metrics. And now enjoy the episode. Hello Baris, great to have you on the show here. Hello Richie, thanks for having me. Yeah, it's a pleasure for me because I knew you from the community a lot from ISTQB and from other events and LinkedIn and so on. I'm really happy that you are now here in our show and we can discuss a very interesting topic, I think.
Because you had a really cool metaphoric idea about testing and how we do testing. I don't know really how to introduce it correctly, but if Da Vinci would be a tester, what would he do? I think it's a very great question. What's behind that? What do you think about that? - To be honest, after spending more than 20 years in the industry, I'm looking for some, How can I say? I want to correlate other things to testing, rather than talking about the technical
dimensions, all the frameworks, tooling and other very precise and engineering stuff. I want to see if I can correlate it to my private life, my daily routine, how I think, how I feel, how I breathe air, I don't know, how I listen to music, to have fun. So those occasions could be connected to testing, if you ask me. So that is the intention behind it. So because I like paintings and I like art, I feel that it is closely correlated to testing. So can I do it like that?
and the most, maybe one of the most popular and famous person behind it is one of my idols, to be honest, Leonardo da Vinci for sure. And I started with that person. So that was the idea. And I did a conference talk in Greece, which had a lot of very, very nice feedback. Now I'm comfortable on that. So you can discuss.
- Yeah, so let's deep dive into it because I remember a long time ago in one of my first testing project, the project manager came to me and said, "You are not a tester, you are an artist." And I can, well, I'm an artist, I'm testing here. So, and it's now resonates so much with your topic. So when we look at Da Vinci, what can we learn from him? - Yeah, of course, he's a very deep person. He lived mostly in the 15th and 16th century.
And when we look at him, he is not only an artist, but also an engineer. He's like us, you and me. So in combination to art, we know that he's a very curious person. He's also a very precise person. He knows strategical thinking, and he created a lot of engineering pieces, machinery tools, as well as of course, the paintings and sculpture and other things. So it's like the combination of both. When you ask me, testing is more or less the same thing.
Using the left side of our brain as well as the right side of our brain. The left side represents the logic, rationality, numbers, data, observations, which is fully needed. But on the right hand side, you need to have empathy, you need to have imagination, you need to have creativity, you need to be spontaneous, you need to look at the holistic picture, so that is our right brain.
So I think he is one of the best people in the world using both sides of his brain, so it is my first privilege to use his name in my presentation, so that was the origination of the idea. I find it very interesting to also focus one time on the second part, on the artist part in us, and on the curiosity and all this creativity we have, because it's a main part of our job, isn't it? Of course. I think one part of our job is to implement things and to do the thing.
The other part is to present it, to create the communication around it. So if one part is missing, if the engineering part is missing, you are in a mess. But if you cannot sell what you have done, what you have created, I think it is nonsense. So it's just a waste of time, if you ask me.
So, on that particular point, I am deeply using my communication part, so the soft skills, and I find myself doing lots of presentations, trainings and all other things, just to show the engineering part to people. So, that is why I think we need to be artists, to convince people, to sell testing, to promote testing, to ask for funding on testing. So how shall I do that? I need to act like an artist and also I need to think like an artist. So that was the triggering point.
You said how to think as an artist. How does an artist think? Of course, it is based on whom we are talking about. If we are talking about Da Vinci, we know his engineering discipline. But of course, there are many other valuable portraits in the past, like Vincent van Gogh, for instance. He is a more emotional person, more intuitive person, a more intense person, a little bit more introvert, but yeah, very correlated to nature.
When you go to Pablo Picasso, we see that he's a very bold person, also a chaotic person and an inventive person, very brave one. When you go to Rembrandt, let me say he is maybe the most thoughtful of all those, quiet person and very observant. I don't know, Salvador Dali, surreal, but also clever and unpredictable. So again, when you, I think you are agreeing with me on that. So we need all of those things, am I right?
- Yeah. - Not only curiosity, but also to run in a chaotic area, not only strategical, but also inventive and observant and thoughtful. So I try to combine everything together. But of course, when we come to Da Vinci, there's a strong evidence, if you ask me, that shows that Da Vinci was a tester. I'm going to tell it to you now. But again, combination of many, many different perspectives into testing. If you ask me, I would tell you how I can prove you that Da Vinci was a tester.
Yes, now I'm very curious. So tell me. Again, I think you also know him very well. After his life is ended, they found, of course, lot of art pieces, as well as the notes, like 5,000 to 7,000 pages of notes he has taken through his entire life. It makes him a very keen observer and a compulsive note taker, if you ask me. So he's the documentarian guy. Also is a bug whisperer. from that perspective and when we see testers we also create a lot of documents and
the documentation part is also there. What about his endless curiosity? He is just jumping into uncertainties and try to... he's always a curious person he was so makes him an explorer guy. So when we look at testing we want exploratory tests and we want exploration in our testing. Also, we see Da Vinci as an interdisciplinary thinker. He is combining forces from engineering, from science, from mechanics, from many different
disciplines, art, into one body, one human body. But what about a tester? We are also a a synthesizer, am I right? So we need to act in an interdisciplinary way. We need to know about computer programming, also computer networks, some hardware stuff, architectural things, frameworks, many things we need to know like him. Also, he's a very high level experimental person, So doing a lot of experimentation. Testing is in one part an experimentation for us. Also, he is a very visionary person.
If you ask me, a tester should be a futuristic person as well. Also, he is very comfortable with messy environments with ambiguity when everything is not very clear. He is there up and running. What about us? We are always in messy requirements. So I have more than 20 lines of proofs for that. That, yeah, is also a tester like us. So we are all little da Vinci's in our project. [LAUGHS] So what do you think?
How can we more get a-- make a balance of more of this artist skills in our testing life to get more, to learn this. Because I think projects are often driven in a very logical way, rational way. How can we force and evolve more the artist in us? That was also a question I wanted to answer in my keynote session, in which I, in detail, examined the paintings of Da Vinci. For instance, if we start with Mona Lisa, which is maybe the most popular one, we can see the smile of uncertainty on her face.
Am I right? A little bit uncertain, smiling, but a little bit also serious, I don't know. And he has a very nice quotation Da Vinci he says the greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions so when I see that quotation, I just convert it into For instance from ISD to be testing principles. It could be converted into absence of errors policy So is it Could it be correlated to Mona Lisa's smile?
It's like internal metrics may look very perfect, but the true quality is how users perceive it. Am I right? So in the end, we maybe think that all the bugs are fixed, but the serious look of our customer shows that the final quality is not there. So that would be, I think, a good reflection on one of his art pieces into testing. Also, when we look at the modern testing principles coming from the Ministry of Testing, they say the customer is the only one capable of evaluating quality.
So it means that testing must go beyond those bugs to capture real world impacts. So that is, for instance, a good correlation with his work into testing. It shows some uncertainty. Of course, we can go with The Last Supper, other paintings, all those nice things. But when I see his paintings, I try to understand the philosophy behind it and try to see if that art would be mixed with engineering.
So in that we are dealing with people, stakeholders, and people are looking for humanized data, humanized reports, not fully engineered data. So if we just use our engineering part, I don't feel that we can really convince people to have a great impact on people.
So in order to influence people and in order to be a real asset in the picture, if you ask me, we need to blend it with art so that show our curiosity, show our exploration perspective, show our empathy, especially how those people think. And this is my report. So how should I report it to the upper management, for instance? Look at the performance testing report, like 50 pages of metrics, just full of engineering stuff.
But how do you explain it to a non-technical person is I think what real testing is, if you ask me. So that is where I need to use artful thinking in order to make an art piece from a very purely engineered performance test report, I need to make it fully humanized, fully more visual, more empathical, and everything should be very attractive in that report, where people are convinced. So that is maybe a long answer, but sorry. No, therefore we are here.
So what comes to my mind is that there's a parallel. If we saw a picture of a drawing from an artist, they always tell us a story, what we see in that. And I think that's true for testing too, when I think about it, that we are also a storyteller in that kind of way. And what you say is that we have to connect to the people and show them the story they understand. Yeah. -For sure.
And also, one of the learnings from him, for instance, could be a very famous quote, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." When I see this phrase, I remember good old days where we are sophisticating everything, just mess up with all the reports, am I right? Using lots of frameworks, lots of scripting, lots of technical things, but in the end, the happiness is not those.
So the happiness comes from a simple report, maybe one small excerpt from a report, one finding that would make everyone happy, but not 100 pages of those things. Maybe instead of creating 1000 scripts, maybe 10 would be better, or finding maybe five valuable bugs is more valuable than having some flaky tests. So that is what, for instance, I use a lot in testing. When I teach it to people, when I advise people and do some recommendations, I underline this fact, simplicity.
So we need to make it simpler. We need to, but it is not an organic way. So normally none of the testing projects would be simple if you really put an emphasis on that. You need to set it as a target, as a serious target, then you may have it. But if you don't work for that, normally the organic way is to have a sophisticated and the complex for the project. - Yeah, it gets complex or even every day from alone.
So from all the impacts from our project, from our methodology, from the tools, from AI, and all this stuff, it gets complexer and complexer every day. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, I like the idea to put more simplicity into it and to make it as a goal to use simple language, simple reports that everyone can understand. And again, one of his very nice quotes, "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding."
But just tell me, when you look at the testing processes and testers, what percentage of those people are defining test as an understanding? Most people still define it as breaking the software, finding the bugs and all other things. Yeah, but these are just materialistic things, if you ask me. The most important definition for testing, if you ask me, is to have valuable information around the product, am I right? To have a better understanding on a product. So in what status is that product?
What quality is that product? So it's not breaking the software or not just giving people bad news, but it is understanding everything more. So it teaches us very valuable information. None of the people, just a very small minority of people would be defining testing as an understanding, if you ask me. So that is also one nice reflection from Mr. Da Vinci into my life. to use it as a guidance. Yeah. You did also one similarity or parallel thing and it was one word in your text.
You sent me up front that I was waking up and you wrote about imperfection. So that Da Vinci uses imperfection, but what about the software quality? What is your correlation here? I think it will be going back to the first principle in ISTQB. So all the software in the world would be imperfect from a perspective, am I right? So we cannot make them perfect. So it's just this is the optimal product, is the wrong perspective. there would be no optimal products in the world.
So I think the world itself doesn't allow this to have the bug-free or optimum things. That will never happen in this world. Maybe in heaven, yes, but in this world, no way. So in that sense, I think originally world is imperfect from many different angles, like the inequalities between people, between regions, between seasons, between day and night. So, yeah, from a perspective it looks perfect, but when you dive deep, there is an imperfection. So not everything is perfect.
It's just trying to make everything perfect is a good reflection. but also knowing that in a way or so there are problems in the world and they will still be there, all the problems. So I think as human beings, in the original sense, why we have all those innovations, why we have all those products, That's why we have all those product launches, nice things, nice processes and services coming from many different... because that we have problems. So it just goes back to that imperfection.
Basically problems in the world will never end. There will always be a problem. I think if the problems in the world will end, that will be the end of the world, if you ask me. In our daily lives and in what we do, in whatever we do, there will be always problems. And it would make it an imperfect thing. So we need to live in that context. We need to adapt ourselves. All the nice things in life, I think they just come because of those problems.
Even a very daily life thing that you use, a tool, a small tool in your house, in your daily life, comes from the problem, am I right? So it's just because that some people look at a problem and try to find a solution to that problem. And that is why we have that nice tool. So in the end, again, we need imperfection, if you ask me. If we reach perfection, I think that will be the end of the story. So why would I work then? Why would I be sleepless at night?
Or why should I try to read more if everything is perfect? So that is, I think, the triggering point for each of us. Yeah, and I think we are, as humans, are problem-solving machines from the beginning of our existence. And as you said, what should we do if everything is then perfect?
And I think the one part is that we accept this imperfection because even the subject quality part when I'm doing the testing, I want to go to more perfection because I want to have great quality and pure, shiny, new interface and all this stuff. But to get one step back and to look at it and to say, "Okay, it's okay." And when it is enough, so I think that's a very interesting discussion and reflection we have to do. Uli. So, from this perspective, Testing is both an art and science.
It's like balancing logic with intuition. If you ask my perspective. Yes, it's a very, very interesting thought construct. I like it so much because it's relating to our work so deeply that we are, I think, on an intuitive way. Testers know that they have not just the logical skills but also have the artists in there. But to make it clear and to make it consciousness for that is so important. So I like very much this idea.
Yes, Baris, thank you very much to be here on the show and that you get us into this Da Vinci exploration. It was very interesting for me. And I take away a lot of insights for me now and to reflect on myself, on my work now. So thank you that you were here and did share that with us. And I think it was not the last time that you will be here on the podcast. I can imagine that. - Why not? - Yeah. - I'm open to discuss with a person like you and you made many very nice contributions to the field.
I think we all work for the betterment for software testing. more modernity and more elegance in testing to empower testers in teams and in their communication in what they do. So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you too. Let's meet again. Sure. Have a great week and see you soon. Bye bye.