Welcome to Episode 134 of the Testing Peers podcast. This week, join Simon, David, Tara and Chris.

How do we explain testing and quality to people who are not testers, in a way that actually lands? In this episode, we talk about meeting stakeholders where they are, translating quality into the language of risk, cost and outcomes, and building trust through visible work and data. We also share practical ways to bring non-testers into the quality journey, from testathons to storytelling.

What we cover

• Getting out of the testing echo chamber and speaking in terms others value, for example, risk, time, cost and customer impact.
• Why “finish testing by Friday” and pass or fail dashboards miss the point, and how to reframe around confidence and acceptable quality.
• Trusted advisor status is earned, not assumed, through consistent visibility and data that supports decisions.
• Using risk as a shared language, tying quality work to concrete mitigations that matter to stakeholders.
• The tension between flexibility and standards, and why some consistency helps credibility.
• Startups versus enterprises, common perceptions of testing, and how to counter “devs can do it all” or “cheap offshore scripts are enough”.
• Making the work visible: show outcomes, not just activities, and celebrate wins to build momentum.
• AI in quality, cautious optimism, and the importance of getting involved early so we help shape how it is used and tested.

Practical ideas discussed

• Run regular testathons and paired exploratory sessions that include developers, product, customer support and leaders. Let people experience the work and discover real issues together.
• Tell relevant, audience-shaped stories. CFO cares about the cost of quality, product cares about customer outcomes, engineers care about feasibility and flow.
• Start small, show value, then scale. Use data from pilots to make a compelling case.
• Document enough to show standards and accountability, without losing agility.
• Use tools like RiskStorming to surface risks early and align on mitigations.
• Own the narrative. Be assertive, positive and specific about the value testing brings, not just the problems it finds.

Shout-outs and references

• Callum Akehurst-Ryan on becoming trusted advisors.
• Sophie Küster, The Impostor’s Guide to Tooting Your Own Horn.
• RiskStorming and other collaborative risk techniques.
• Exploratory testing and team testathons as ongoing practice, not a one-off event.

#PeersCon26 Call for Collaborations for written and video submissions until September 30th 2025, and also for VolunPeers. More on all this can be found here

Tickets for the event are now live too, starting at £15 until December, when they go up to £30.
And as always, we are looking for sponsors to make this event the success it has been for the last 2 years, get in touch if interested

Thanks to our sponsors – NFocus Testing.

nFocus are a UK based software testing company. They’ve been supporting businesses for 24 years by providing services that include burst resource, accelerated test automation, performance testing and fully managed testing services. In 2021, they launched a Test Automation Academy to create amazing testers and they’ve now created jobs for 48 people in our industry in just under three years!

www.nfocus.co.uk and [email protected] for anyone wanting to get in touch.

Support the show