Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering

By Richard Seidl | Software Development & Testing ExpertBusiness Technology Education Management

Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering episodes

November 06, 2025Tester Visibility: Put Your Testing Work on the Board - Cassandra Leung
How Testers Can Influence Project Quality
In this episode, I talk with Cassandra H. Leung about why testers still feel unseen and what we can do about it. We unpack impostor syndrome, the shy voice that says keep quiet, and how it holds many of us back. Cassandra shares a simple frame: show, share, shine. Put testing work on the board, share notes and dashboards, and keep a brag board for wins. We explore the wider role of testers across product talks, pipelines, and coaching the team.
"If you're doing testing right and everything is going well, no one notices. But if you make a mistake, then everyone pays attention." - Cassandra H. Leung
Cassandra H. Leung is a trained Quality Engineer, certified Scrum Master, and UX enthusiast. She specialises in exploratory testing and test strategy, and enjoys supporting teams towards better quality products and processes. Cassandra has spoken at events around the world, writes about topics relevant to the technology industry, and creates content to educate future generations of testing specialists. She's active in the online testing community, and hopes to inspire others to share their stories and learnings.
Highlights:
Testers who omit their work from team boards because it lacks "releasable features" make their contributions invisible; adding exploratory sessions and automated checks to shared boards generates questions and draws colleagues in.
Testing is a social discipline: personal relationships with developers and other colleagues surface pain points that formal observation alone misses, and trusted colleagues share problems they would otherwise keep to themselves.
Visibility without buy-in fails; identifying what already hurts the team and addressing those pain points first is what makes quality improvements stick and earns support for broader changes.
The core skills that matter most for testers are communication, critical thinking, empathy, and adaptability, not the current buzzwords, because those fundamentals outlast any single tool or trend.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
24 min
October 30, 2025Stoic Decision-Making: Judge Choices Instead of Outcomes - Maryse Meinen
Stoicism in software development
In this episode, I talk with Maryse Meinen about stoic thinking for product development and life. We ask what happens if you stop judging success by outcomes and start judging by decision quality. Maryse shares tools you can use today: scenario planning, the 10 10 10 rule, and a simple decision journal. Prepare for failure, accept what you cannot control, and act with courage, justice, and temperance. This fits agile work and the mess we face in tech and society.
"The only things you can control are the things inside your mind." - Maryse Meinen
Maryse Meinen is a product development coach who uses Agile and Stoicism to make teams and organizations more resilient and sustainable. She espouses the philosophies of degrowth and stoicism, which advocate working more efficiently with fewer resources and valuing what is already there. Her motto is: Achieve more with less!
Highlights:
Outcome in product development is heavily influenced by factors outside anyone's control, so decision quality is a more reliable focus than outcome quality.
The Stoic principle of premeditatio malorum, preparing for bad events in advance, is a practical product management strategy, not pessimism.
The 10-10-10 rule structures every significant decision across three time horizons: 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years, preventing purely short-term thinking.
Judging a decision by whether it turned out well is a reasoning error Annie Duke calls resulting; a bad outcome does not make a decision wrong, and a good outcome does not make it right.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
31 min
October 23, 2025Software Testing as Art and Science: Logic and Empathy - Barış Sarıalioğlu
Testing as an Art Form Discovering Curiosity and Creativity in Software Quality
In this episode, I talk with Barış Sarıalioğlu about testing as art and science, through the lens of Leonardo da Vinci. We ask what a tester can learn from curiosity, observation, and experiments. Mona Lisa's smile shows how uncertainty beats 100 pages of metrics. We should aim for understanding, not bug counts. We talk about storytelling, simple reports that people can read, and mixing engineering with empathy. Testers work across disciplines, explore, and make sense of messy projects. Perfection is a trap. Good enough can be great. Balance logic and imagination, and you get impact that reaches beyond tools.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." - Barış Sarıalioğlu
With over 20 years of experience in IT and software engineering, Barış Sarıalioğlu specializes in navigating the complexities of digital transformation, innovation, and leadership
across diverse industries.
His expertise spans Digital Transformation, Agility, Artificial Intelligence, Software Development, User Experience, Design Thinking, Quality Assurance, and Software Testing, enabling him to deliver holistic, technology-driven solutions to business
challenges. He has led global teams and managed cross-functional departments, including HR, Marketing, Sales, Legal, and Finance, aligning organizational goals with innovative strategies. His work spans industries such as telecommunications, banking, defense, aviation, automotive, insurance, e-commerce and semiconductors, contributing to high-stakes projects across Turkey, the U.S., Russia, Germany, China, and beyond.
As a published author and keynote speaker at 100+ conferences in 50+ countries, He is dedicated to advancing software engineering and exploring the transformative power of technology on organizations and individuals alike.
Highlights:
Testing requires both analytical precision and creative imagination: the logical side handles data and observation, while the creative side supplies empathy, intuition, and holistic thinking.
A test report's value is determined by how well non-technical stakeholders understand it, not by how many metrics or pages it contains.
Simplicity in testing is not the default outcome; it must be set as a deliberate target, because left unmanaged, testing projects grow complex on their own.
Testing is best defined as building valuable understanding of a product's quality, not as breaking software or delivering bad news to developers.
Imperfection in software is permanent and structural: chasing a bug-free or optimal product is a false goal, and accepting this frees teams to focus on real-world user impact.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
30 min
October 16, 2025Well-Being at Work: Small Team Rituals That Lower Stress - Clara Ramos González
How self care habits raise quality and agility
In this episode, I talk with Clara Ramos González about how self-care can raise quality and agility. We look at why communication failure still breaks projects and how breath can fix more than tools. Clara blends QA leadership with yoga and brings simple rituals to teams. Three deep breaths to open meetings. One word to set intention. Weekly coffee talks without work. A feedback rule to sleep on it. The message is clear. Bring your whole self. Lead by example. Small steps cut stress and help us build better software and healthier teams.
"High rotation, stress, burnout is what cost the most to the IT industry." - Clara Ramos González
Clara is a Senior QA Manager specializing in guiding companies through their Digital Transformation. As a certified Manager, she provides Workshops for IT Leaders and Teams to elevate the team potential and engagement, and as a passionate advocate for Quality Assurance, she regularly speaks at various IT conferences, being a proud ambassador for the strongest brands in the industry. Clara shows she is a Yoga teacher and dedicated meditator, in one of her workshops: "Balancing Code with Calm: A guide to thrive at work and personal life", aiming to integrate daily work with spiritual growth, promoting a holistic approach to reduce stress and increase team satisfaction.
Highlights:
Splitting work personality from personal identity costs energy and produces no benefit: people have one body, one mind, and one life, which shows up in every meeting regardless.
Three deep breaths using the Pranayama belly-breathing technique at the start of every meeting takes one minute and lowers stress while raising focus for everyone in the room.
Weekly coffee talks with a hard rule against discussing work topics build the personal connections that make teams communicate openly when pressure peaks on the project.
Feedback received in one-to-one meetings requires at least one full day of reflection before any response, which reduces resistance and makes retrospectives more productive.
Communication failure has been the leading cause of workplace project breakdown for ten years in a row, making team connection a quality-critical responsibility, not a soft extra.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
29 min
October 09, 2025End-to-End Testing Framework: Start with Requirements - Mesut Durukal
Switching End-to-End Test Automation Frameworks: Lessons from Real-World Projects
In this episode, I talk with Mesut Durukal about picking the right end to end test automation framework. Mesut shares why tool choice must serve real needs, not trends. It is a mindset shift from hype to needs. In his case users were on Safari, the team tool did not run there. He mapped needs, compared Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, TestCafe, and Nightwatch, and chose Playwright for speed and broad browser support. We talk about reporting, debugging, and docs. We touch on architecture, like keeping login and helpers outside specs, so migration stays clean. For me, this is tech with agility. Know your goals, grow your system, and review choices often.
"If we go with the wrong tools or wrong alternatives, then we might not be able to cover everything that we are supposed to do." - Mesut Durukal
Mesut has over 15 years of experience in areas such as industrial automation, IoT, cloud services and defense industry, complemented by his expertise in test automation and CI/CD integration. He has held multiple roles in multinational projects including Quality Owner and Hiring Manager and is well versed in CMMI, Scrum & PMP. As a recognized speaker on international stages and winner of the award for the best presentation, he is also involved in various program committees.
Highlights:
Safari browser support was the decisive failure point that forced a tool migration: the existing framework could not run tests on the most-used browser in the target market.
Defining required features before evaluating tools, not after, is what separates a structured tool selection from a trend-driven one.
A well-architected test suite with shared helper classes instead of duplicated spec files makes framework migration significantly faster, because reusable functions are framework-agnostic.
Playwright outperformed the alternatives on execution speed and Docker image size, while Cypress offered stronger built-in reporting and an integrated visual test runner.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
22 min
October 02, 2025Context in Software Testing: Why Testers Must Ask Why - Chris Armstrong
Why winners collect failures
In this episode, I talk with Chris Armstrong about context in testing. We talked about why "it depends" is an honest answer in complex work. Chris shows how decisive humility helps. Say what you do not know. Find the people and data to learn fast. We talk about fear, optimism, and why winners collect more failures. I ask how testers grow influence. We land on trust, social skills, and asking better questions. Challenge tools and processes with respect. Start small with clear hypotheses and visible outcomes. Remove unnecessary friction. AI comes up as a fresh field for testing. Join early, shape it. Stay curious. Context moves, and so should we.
"Winners have more failures than losers." - Chris Armstrong
Chris Armstrong is tester always looking to improve. His testing journey began in 2004 and has crossed several different industries. He identifies as a pragmatic agilist and quality practices geek.
He advocates for inclusion, collaboration and continuous improvement.
He loves learning and storytelling, and aims for his blog to be a platform for him to process his thoughts and observations. It is not intended to be instructional, but more an insight into how he sees the world and to be an outlet.
He also podcasts as part of a group of test leadership peers, the Testing Peers
Highlights:
"It depends" is the only honest answer in complex environments because context is never static and unknown factors emerge throughout the work.
Decisive humility, knowing clearly what you do not know and where to go to find it out, is a more valuable tester trait than projecting false certainty.
Asking why a tool, process, or decision exists is a core tester responsibility, not an overreach, because untested assumptions produce wrong solutions.
Winners accumulate more failures than losers because acting into the unknown generates learning, while inaction leaves no foundation to build on.
Testers who stay outside the AI narrative risk having their craft replaced by solutions built by people who do not understand software quality.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
29 min
September 25, 2025Given When Then: BDD Scenarios Grow from Shared Examples - Gáspár Nagy
Why Examples Matter: Rethinking Requirements
In this episode, I talk with Gáspár Nagy about behavior driven development. We look at why a simple example can beat a specification. You do not learn soccer from a rulebook. You learn by playing and watching plays. BDD uses the same trick to build understanding early. We discuss example mapping, writing readable scenarios, and turning them into executable specs with Cucumber, SpecFlow, and Reqnroll. Done well, this guides vertical slices, shows progress, and stops the mini waterfall at the end of a sprint.
"Learning by example is a human thing. And somehow, we have forgotten that with software development." - Gáspár Nagy
Gáspár Nagy, the creator of SpecFlow & Reqnroll, bringing over 20 years of experience as a coach, trainer and test automation expert nowadays through his company, called Spec Solutions. He is the co-author of the books "Discovery: Explore behaviour using examples" and "Formulation: Document examples with Given/When/Then" and also leads SpecSync, aiding teams in test traceability with Azure DevOps and Jira. He is active in the open-source community through leading the Reqnroll project. Gáspár shares his insights at conferences, emphasizing his commitment to helping teams implement Behavior-Driven Development (BDD).
Highlights:
BDD scenarios like given-when-then are not the starting point but the documented end result of a collaborative discovery process that must include business and technical roles together.
Teams that skip the collaborative example-finding session and let one person write scenarios alone reproduce the same communication gap BDD is designed to close.
Driving implementation scenario by scenario, completing one before starting the next, produces a better final design than fleshing out the full solution upfront, because requirements shape the code directly.
Readable BDD scenarios give product owners a daily, self-service view of implementation progress without waiting for a sprint demo or a status update from developers.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
35 min
September 18, 2025Software Testing Value: Frame Quality in Business Terms - Daniel Knott
Why Software Testing Struggles With Recognition and How AI Changes the Game
In this episode, I talk with Daniel Knott about the real pains in testing and what comes next. Why do managers cut quality when money gets tight. We look at AI and low code that spit out apps fast, often without clear architecture. We warn about skipping performance and security. We also reflect on how testers can sell value in business terms. Speak revenue, KPIs, and user happiness, not code coverage. Daniel says domain knowledge may beat deep coding as AI writes more code. We explore prompt reviews as a new shift left habit.
"I truly believe that we have like in five to 10 years we see a huge demand in people who are able to understand system architectures." - Daniel Knott
Daniel Knott loves digital products with high quality being web or native mobile applications. He has been working in the IT industry for almost 20 years with experience in hands-on software testing for desktop, web and mobile applications. He also worked as product manager for mobile and web products. At the moment, Daniel is working as an IT manager as Head of Engineering, helping software development teams ship great products with high quality.
Daniel wrote two books - Hands-On Mobile App Testing and Smartwatch App Testing and is a frequent blogger and conference speaker. In 2022 he also created his YouTube Channel about Software Testing which has grown to more than 145k subscribers.
Highlights:
Testing's core problem is not AI disruption but a decades-long failure to communicate testing value in business terms, such as revenue impact and user satisfaction, rather than technical metrics like code coverage.
Prompt reviews are an emerging shift-left practice: because small changes in wording produce significantly different AI outputs, reviewing the prompts used to generate code becomes a quality gate in its own right.
Domain knowledge is becoming more valuable than deep technical skills, because testers increasingly need to judge AI-generated outcomes rather than write or maintain code themselves.
Non-functional requirements, including load, performance, and accessibility, are routinely overlooked, and ignoring architecture early makes them expensive to fix once a product ships.
Cutting testers in a downturn is a short-term saving that creates a long-term shortage of people who can understand and verify system architectures, especially as AI-generated codebases grow.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
29 min
September 11, 2025Tester Influence: Frame Bugs by Business Impact - Kat Obring
Stop saying everything is broken: Speak in outcomes and get taken seriously
In this episode, I talk with Kat Obring about the tester as an influencer. We explore how to stop saying everything is broken and start speaking the language of stakeholders. Bring evidence, not opinions. Say "the Safari sign up button fails and 20 percent of users are blocked". We share a 15 second check before stand up, and pairing early so testing is part of development, not a mini waterfall at the end. Pick small battles and run one or two week experiments. If it works, keep it. If not, drop it. Influence without authority grows from trust and habits.
"If we cannot work in a team, then we are not going to be successful in this role. It is fairly simple, right?" - Kat Obring
With over 20 years in the software industry, Kat Obring now focuses on what matters most: teaching teams and individuals how to measurably improve the quality of their work. Her practical frameworks combine insights from her diverse experience as a DevOps QA engineer, Head of Delivery, and, surprisingly, her early career as a chef. She's learned that evidence always beats guesswork, and a well-designed experiment will reveal more truth than months of planning ever could.
Highlights:
Framing a bug report around business impact lands harder than stating that quality is bad: telling a product owner that a broken button affects a specific browser used by a fifth of all users is evidence, not opinion.
Small, low-cost changes that show results within one or two weeks are easier to get buy-in for than multi-month transformation programs, because people can see the effect and abandon the change if it does not work.
Testers need a different message for each stakeholder, because the same bug causes different pain for developers, product owners, and marketing teams, and one uniform complaint reaches none of them.
A 15-second check at stand-up, confirming that requirements are present in a ticket before it moves to in progress, can cut the back-and-forth between testers, developers, and product owners that drags out a sprint.
Mini-waterfall inside a sprint, where all stories land in the test column two days before the sprint ends, disappears when testing is treated as part of development work rather than a separate phase after it.
More Links with Insights:
Free Ebook about the QED Framework
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
29 min
September 04, 2025Cypress to Playwright: Migrate Critical Paths First - Maciej Wyrodek
Switching From Cypress to Playwright: A Real-World Guide to Test Automation Migration
In this episode, I talk with Maciej Wyrodek about moving from Cypress to Playwright. We talked about why Cypress started to work against the team: opinionated style, plugin churn, iFrames, flaky screenshots, and a pricing wall around parallel runs. Maciej's answer was a hands on hackathon with devs and testers. Playwright won. The migration starts with their top 10 flows and production smoke checks.
"There is no second testing environment such close to production like production itself." - Maciej Wyrodek
Maciej Wyrodek is a knowledge seeker, Quality Consultant, Mentor and Trainer - specialised in process improvement, and Test automation.
Maciej is always looking for a new opportunity to challenge and hone his skills. He has gathered experience working for different companies with different working models, From small to big corporations, From Product via In-house development to software house. Thanks to that he has a wide perspective on testing quality and delivering value.
During his stay in Dublin he realised his passion: Knowledge sharing.
His strong belief is that what makes us human is the ability to learn and share knowledge.
That is why for the almost decade he has been doing his best to give back to the IT community, by writing articles, recording videos on his channel Itea Morning and speaking on conferences.
Highlights:
Choosing the most popular framework for the wrong context creates compounding workarounds: Cypress was a poor fit for iFrame-heavy payment flows, full-page screenshot needs, and specific React scroll behavior.
Vendor lock-in on parallelization killed the Cypress relationship: Cypress blocked third-party orchestration tools from version 13 onward, leaving teams either paying multiples of their QA budget for Cypress Cloud or freezing on an outdated version.
A one-day hands-on hackathon with real test scenarios on the actual product reveals tool fit faster and more reliably than any static feature comparison or vendor demo.
AI-assisted migration from Cypress to Playwright shows early promise but requires careful prompting, feeding both repos and documentation to the agent, and the results still need human review for long-term maintainability.
📘 Tool migration ahead? Teamscale playbook: migrate only 20% of tests, keep nearly all bug detection. Download for free
45 min

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Software testing is no longer just a phase—it’s the foundation of modern engineering and your ultimate competitive advantage.

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Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering

Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering episodes

About Software Testing Unleashed - QA, DevEx & Quality Engineering