QATalks

How do QA leaders navigate the current landscape? There are a lot of uncertainties in the world, and even without that uncertainty, we live in a business market that never stops changing. 

So how do we navigate those shifts? 

The key, according to Dr. David A. Bishop, is three-fold: 

Agility, flexibility, & leanness

Dr. Bishop was a guest on the QA Talks podcast recently and shared all about: 

• What makes an Agile leader
• The key test metrics to focus on in an Agile environment today
• The cultural shift in Agile development

This post is based on a QA Talks podcast with Dr. David A Bishop of Agile Worx. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe here.

If you don't use Apple Podcasts, you can find all our episodes here.

Agile and DevOps have transformed the way enterprise functions today.

But it's not always smooth sailing.

Especially for managers.

We sat down to chat with Mark Bland, Sr. Global Test Manager at Premier Farnell, about all things agile.

What we talked about:

• The 3 characteristics of agile leadership
• Strategies for testing and automation
• How to get a 30% jump start
• Best practices on how to get the right mix of automation and manual testing

This post is based on a QA Talks podcast with Mark Bland of Premier Farnell. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe here. If you don't use Apple Podcasts, you can find all our episodes here.

Some buzzwords are hot for a reason:

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a new one — retaining tech talent.

We had a chance to sit down with Kevin Pyles, Director of QA at Domo, to talk about some of the hottest topics in QA. 

What we talked about:

• The role of AI in QA and whether we'll all be out of a job in the near future
• How having tester dashboards answers basically every question execs could ask
• Engineers hop from company to company looking for vision, not a bigger paycheck

This post is based on a QA Talks podcast with Kevin Pyles of Domo. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe here. If you don't use Apple Podcasts, you can find all our episodes here.

This episode we are joined by two incredible guests: Nanda Padmaraju, Senior Vice President at Cigniti Technologies, and Paul Trotter, Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Atom Bank. We talked about the importance of QA in digital and cloud businesses and how that is changing the game in the financial industry. 

What we talked about:

• Digital technology allows for banks to remain flexible
• Embracing digital transformation provides increased QA
• Digital technology lets organizations have both quality and speed.

Check out this resource that was mentioned:

• Thought Machine

To listen to this show, find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and our website.

There's no such thing as a 100% bug-free product. Just having a QA team doesn't automatically shield you from bugs.

Quality needs to be a culture that permeates the whole company, not just one little afterthought department.

On this episode of QA Talks, we interview Priyanka Halder, the senior manager of quality engineering at GoodRx.

What we talked about:

• Why Priyanka loves working with startups
• Quality engineering vs. bug tolerance
• 3 steps to building a QA team from scratch
• Benefits of crowd testing
• How to achieve seamless functioning

To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe here.

A lot of times, people assume that moving from quality assurance to quality engineering is just a name change.

That's not the case at all.

Recently on an episode of QA Talks, we were joined by Melissa Tondi, a quality engineering leader with nearly 20 years of experience in the QA/QE space, to talk about the modernization of quality.

What we talked about:

• The exact difference between QA and QE
• How to know when a company is really ready for quality testing
• What a modernized quality assistance looks like
• Major pitfalls and benchmarks in QA modenrization

This post is based on a podcast interview with Melissa Tondi. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to QA Talks.

Everyone loves their silos.

What they don't love is training their replacements.

This makes people resistant to QA transformation, to say the least.

Today we're joined by Edmund Tan, Director of Quality Assurance and Support, to discuss quality assurance and technology in the hospitality sector.

"The quality engineering group basically puts themselves in the mindset of the end user," Edmund said.

Every company is under the gun these days.

The software development life cycle has sped up to a breakneck speed, one that is growing increasingly difficult to keep up with.

With so many releases happening simultaneously, it's more crucial than ever to have a solid plan in place, and this is where a good quality DevOps plan will come in to place, allowing your team to streamline the work so that you can continue to deliver at the pace demanded by the market.

But what are the biggest challenges when implementing devops in your organization? How does it transform the software testing industry, and what are the benefits gained by embracing it?

Chris DeGonia, Director of QA at International SOS, was a guest on the QA Talks podcast recently and had some very valuable thoughts on the topic.

QA Talks inaugural episode with Pradeep Govindasamy, Chief Technology Officer and President of Cigniti Technologies.  Pradeep is also the head of the North America West Business Unit.

Pradeep is an industry thought leader in software testing with over 15 years of experience. He has strong expertise in setting up Testing Centers of Excellence around Test management, Automation, Mobility, SOA and Functional testing. He established more than 20+ teams of 500-member size. He possesses unique experience around Quality Engineering and has done extensive business development in driving the offerings around Mobility, Digital Commerce, SOA, and Automation. He has been the key champion in setting up several niche skill practices for testing services. 

Nanda is a Senior Vice-President, Cigniti and head of the ROW (Rest of World) Business Unit, Nanda is going to be a co-host of this show.

Nanda is a results-oriented leader with proven success in pursuing and managing multi-year, multimillion-dollar IT Testing service deals across diversified and financial service sectors. He is adept at building long term client relationships and alliance partnerships. His IT consulting experience includes ERP implementations in challenging, fast-paced and varied enterprise verticals.

Specialities include Enterprise Sales and Account Management, Revenue and ROI enhancing strategy and implementation, Team building and training.