WeAreDevelopers Logo WeAreDevelopers
Sign in
For You LIVE
WeAreDevelopers LIVE • Dec 2, 2020

Excellent Software Testing

Ingo Philipp

Are your automated testing tools just generating faster chaos? Discover why excellent software testing requires shifting from prescriptive dashboards to human-centric risk intelligence.

Pause
Mute Enter Fullscreen
#1 about 4 min

Recognizing testing as a cognitive activity over tool mastery

How testing relies on critical thinking rather than simple test artifact management.

#2 about 2 min

The software testing timeline and regression checking pitfalls

Why repetitive test case execution falls short of true software testing.

#3 about 4 min

Framing testing as an information service to close knowledge gaps

How testing reveals new knowledge to support better product fixing and shipping decisions.

#4 about 3 min

Approaching software quality as a subjective social science

Why testers must navigate cognitive biases and subjective human definitions of quality.

#5 about 3 min

Balancing automated checking with human-centric testing skills

How selective automation supports testing while keeping human evaluation squarely at the center.

#6 about 2 min

Applying context-driven practices across diverse testing environments

Leveraging heuristics and interdisciplinary skills to adapt testing strategies to unique contexts.

#7 about 3 min

Utilizing mental models to evaluate software design and purpose

Creating abstract representations to question specifications and confirm software solves the right problems.

#8 about 3 min

Building a continuous learning culture through collective intelligence

Extracting patterns from mistakes and utilizing diverse team perspectives like pair and mob testing.

#9 about 3 min

Treating software testing as an experimental and undecidable science

Why testing requires falsification and continuous exploration rather than trying to quantify absent bugs.

#10 about 2 min

Evaluating risk profiles through the eyes of different stakeholders

Adopting internal and external viewpoints to comprehensively assess threats to software value.

#11 about 4 min

Cultivating relentless curiosity and skepticism to uncover hidden threats

Challenging deep-rooted assumptions and embracing continuous critical thinking to expose cunning software issues.

#12 about 3 min

Communicating software deviations with empathy to encourage positive improvement

Delivering critical feedback on discovered flaws in a deliberate and non-judgmental manner.

#13 about 3 min

Enabling decisions through comprehensive quality assistance narratives

Replacing meaningless vanity metrics with actionable insights on tested outcomes and remaining constraints.

#14 about 3 min

Summarizing the metaphorical roots of testing excellence

Tracing the synthesized characteristics back to a collective community of inspiring software testers.

Matching moments

2:04 min

Shifting software testing from adversarial gatekeeping to enablement

Steve Upton Steve Upton · World Congress 2024

1:55 min

Adopting a pragmatic approach to reasonable software engineering tests

Golo Roden · World Congress 2021

2:30 min

The shifting mindset of modern quality assurance engineers

Alisa Hrustic Alisa Hrustic · Europe 2026 Virtual

2:18 min

Transforming software quality from assurance to enablement

Ondřej Gróf Ondřej Gróf · World Congress 2026 Europe

4:43 min

Key principles for establishing sustainable quality assurance practices

Basia Karaagac Basia Karaagac · Europe 2026 Virtual

2:49 min

The evolution of software testing using artificial intelligence

Alisa Hrustic Alisa Hrustic · Europe 2026 Virtual

More from WeAreDevelopers LIVE

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Tech Education in Two Languages thumbnail
1:00:18
6 days ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Tech Education in Two Languages

Daniel Cranney, Roxy Rodriguez-Becker

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Playing in Production thumbnail
1:06:40
13 days ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Playing in Production

Andrew MacLean, Daniel Cranney, Christian Heilmann

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Is CSS Catching Up to Flash? thumbnail
1:03:33
27 days ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Is CSS Catching Up to Flash?

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Bramus Van Damme

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Project Chopin: Make Your Team and Agents Play Along thumbnail
1:21:17
about 1 month ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Project Chopin: Make Your Team and Agents Play Along

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Krzysztof Cieślak

Fake or News - AI Toothbrushes, Carrier Pigeon Tech & Life on Mars - Krzysztof Cieślak thumbnail
4:23
about 1 month ago

Fake or News - AI Toothbrushes, Carrier Pigeon Tech & Life on Mars - Krzysztof Cieślak

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Open Source Agent Toolkits thumbnail
1:00:38
about 1 month ago

WeAreDevelopers LIVE - Open Source Agent Toolkits

Chris Heilmann, Daniel Cranney, Eddie Jaoude

Upcoming sessions on this topic

Open session

What If AI Helps Us Build the Wrong Product Faster?

  • Sekhar Burra

    Sain Innovation

    CEO

Open session

AI Is the Easy Part: Why Faster Engineers Don't Make Faster Businesses

  • Bharat Sharma

    Booking

    Senior Engineering Manager

Open session

Autopsy of an Autonomous Incident: When the Agent Made It Worse

  • Navin Pai

    StackGen

    Director of Engineering

Open session

What I Got Wrong Shipping an MCP Server for Live Infrastructure

  • Pritesh Kiri

    Harness

    Developer Relations Engineer

Open session

Beware of Strangers Bearing Code: Open Source Trust in the Agent Era

  • Vikram Vaswani

    Consultant

Open session

Teaching AI Coding Agents to Build It Right the First Time

  • Sajeetharan Sinnathurai

    Microsoft

    Principal Product Manager

Related videos

Let’s Talk Quality! thumbnail
27:29
World Congress 2026 Europe • 3 months ago

Let’s Talk Quality!

Lilia Gargouri

Your Testing Strategy is broken - lets fix it! thumbnail
28:12
World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

Your Testing Strategy is broken - lets fix it!

Luise Freese

Testing .NET applications a Tool box for every developer thumbnail
29:13
World Congress 2023 • about 3 years ago

Testing .NET applications a Tool box for every developer

Alexandre Borges

Digital Quality & Trust: The Quality Tree Framework for Responsible AI & Software thumbnail
25:10
Europe 2026 Virtual • 3 months ago

Digital Quality & Trust: The Quality Tree Framework for Responsible AI & Software

Serge Baumberger

How I Built QA from Scratch in a Scaling Startup - no fluff real life story thumbnail
34:35
Europe 2026 Virtual • 3 months ago

How I Built QA from Scratch in a Scaling Startup - no fluff real life story

Basia Karaagac

How to add test automation to your project: The good, the bad, and the ugly thumbnail
26:20
World Congress 2025 • about 1 year ago

How to add test automation to your project: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Augustin Gottlieb

Related articles

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.