The Mind of a Fox
Scenario Planning in Action
by Chantell Illbury and Clem Sunter
Paperback - 144 pages (2001)
Human & Rousseau
ISBN: 0798141697
The Mind of a Fox provides a vivid description of the thinking skills needed to analyse any environment so as to conceptualise a number of future outcomes. Dynamic thinking is linked to the characteristics of a fox – adaptable, intuitive, tenacious, resourceful, imaginative. Foxes are capable of entertaining a number of alternatives at once. The pernickety hedgehog contrasts the fox and focuses on one big idea at a time.
The authors have won international acclaim as the book uniquely foresaw the events of September 11 through the scenario matrix it advocates by recognising the likely scenarios of “international apartheid” – poor nations' increasing animosity to the economic power of G7 countries over them.
A matrix is plotted with the axes of Control / Absence of Control (y axis) and Certainty / Uncertainty (x axis). Moving from the SE quadrant clockwise the following quadrants are used: “Rules of the game” (Certainty, No Control); “Key uncertainties and scenarios” (Uncertainty, No Control) “Options” (Uncertainty and Control); and, “Decisions” (Control and Certainty).
As software testing is based on critical thinking skills for insight into testing effectiveness, serious testers will find great value in exercising their thinking skills as applied to software testing. Factors that would normally remain the subject of a SWOT analysis are now taken a further step to understand the possible scenario ramifications they give rise to. Scenarios become future memories that the owner can exercise instantly as key uncertainties change.
Applied to the software testing industry, the rules of the game include the rise in demand for skilled to poor software, speed to market of competition and the efficiencies of properly maintained automation tools. Key uncertainties are the time it will take for ISO 9001 acceptance by the market, up-skilling costs for testers and recruitment costs, increasing liability of development houses for software malfunction and industry acceptance of key testing leverages. Two scenarios emerge. The Canon ball, companies carry on the same old trajectory doing what they always have (hedgehog thinking) and continue to erode customer and staff loyalty and lose stamina and nimbleness to meet targets. In the Guided Missile, companies implement various tests that help out-manoeuvre the obstacles to the moving target of software quality.
Kimon Paxinos