There is one thing that bugs me about mind maps as a testing tool, it really bugs me a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I find mind maps a great collaboration tool to get ideas out of people’s heads and put them on paper. They are great for designing a test plan, a few testers can sit down, brainstorm and create a map that can be efficiently used as a complete plan.

So what bothers me so much?

This: “Why don’t we do the same exercise together with the developers before the code is written?”

Are we so obsessed with finding bugs that we cannot share our thought process and help PREVENT (yes prevent) the defects instead of catching developers out and wasting customer’s money and time?

I really hope that somebody out there will give me a valid reason why we shouldn’t shift left the mind map creation and prevent the defects instead of detecting them.

Otherwise we should start doing it now, no excuses.