I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on LinkedIn recently that make the same claim: speed of writing code was never the bottleneck in software engineering. The real bottleneck was always thinking, choosing the right thing to build, understanding the problem. AI has just made that painfully obvious. I partly agree, but the framing is […]
Why the bottleneck was never just about thinking Read More »
Sometimes I despair about the QA profession. Not because the work is hard, or because quality is complex. Both of those are true, but they always have been. What gets to me is where so much of our collective energy still goes. We have much bigger fish to fry. We have the tools to do
AI did not break testing Read More »
That day I rage quit my project It finally fell apart over a UI reskin. I had an application that mostly worked. It was not polished, but it was coherent, testable, and good enough to keep moving. When I asked the AI to reskin it using my brand colours, what I expected to be a
Stop vibe coding before you delete your repo Read More »
AI has been the background noise of every software conversation lately. Some people treat it as a superpower that will solve everything. Others point to low-quality AI slop online and see it as the end of original thought. I am somewhere in the middle. I use AI a lot, and I trust it for some
AI, curiosity, and a little procrastination Read More »
Every tester has had that moment. You look for guidance on a current problem and end up with advice that feels twenty years old. You find articles on writing test cases in Excel, or long arguments about whether automated testing can ever replace manual testing. It is a little surreal. It is easy to assume
The reason so much testing content feels stuck in the past Read More »
The experimenter’s mindset beats the automation mindset A few months ago, someone at a conference asked me whether I thought testers would still have jobs in five years. It wasn’t a joke. You could hear the anxiety in the room, because the arrival of generative AI has reignited a very old fear in our industry:
Why the Experimenter’s Mindset Outlasts Automation in Software Testing Read More »
I’m heading to Malmö, Sweden soon to give a keynote. Travel planning might sound like the opposite of testing in DevOps, but I’ve found it’s a great place to practise the same habits I use with teams. My framework, Q.E.D., Question, Evidence, Develop, is designed for making better decisions about quality. But it works just
How I plan conference travel like a software experiment Read More »
Document less, share more: A modern take on test evidence Do we still need test case management tools? In my experience, not really. At least, not in the way most teams are still using them. Test case management tools are everywhere, but they’re not helping us make better decisions. In modern software teams, they’re often
Document less, share more: A modern take on test evidence Read More »
A few weeks ago I got on a video call with Rosie Sherry from the Ministry of Testing to record an episode of the “Leading with Quality” podcast. During this conversation I started musing on why there are so few senior leadership roles for quality. And I loved our chat about, but felt there’s a
Why is there no Chief Quality Officer? Read More »
“What do feelings have to do with quality assurance?” This question emerged from a question on LinkedIn I posted this week, asking QA engineers what feels worse: finding a critical bug right before release, or being known as the person who always blocks releases. While the post generated significant engagement, what truly caught my attention
From Gatekeeper to Guide: Why Emotions Matter in Quality Engineering Read More »
