Global App Testing’s first ever Quality Leaders Network Evening took place on 12 September, at the BGF Offices in Charing Cross. This exclusive invitation-only event for testing and quality industry experts was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the launch of Leading Quality, and host a discussion around important questions in the software industry.
Ronald Cummings-John welcomes the Quality Leaders Network.
The evening was a great success!
Global App Testing co-founder, Ronald Cummings-John, kicked-off the evening with some words on the story of our new book, Leading Quality, and the journey to its release. He outlined conversations he had with software industry professionals about the need for effective QA strategy, and stressed the importance of the question: how should I lead quality inside my company?
Our exclusive panel speakers, Maryann Lockley, Head of QA at Camelot Group (The National Lottery) and Stephen Janaway, VP of Engineering at Bloom & Wild, then joined Ronald to discuss a number of pressing questions around quality, and the techniques used by the world’s most successful engineering and QA teams to deliver high-quality products to their customers.
Leading Quality, our Amazon best-selling new book is available now.
Our panel discussion
Welcoming questions from the audience via sli-do, panellists spoke about the need to change the quality narrative in your company, QA automation vs. manual testing, proving the value of QA, what leading quality means to them and more. Here are some of our favourite answers:
What does leading quality mean to you?
Maryann Lockley, Head of QA at Camelot Group: “Quality is about what I am delivering for the customer. Leading it is making sure that everyone in the organisation is working towards an agreed set of standards of what quality should look like.”
Stephen Janaway, VP of Engineering at Bloom & Wild: “When something goes into production and I can be confident that it will deliver what the stakeholders expect, then I’m happy, and I view that as quality.”
Stephen Janaway and Maryann Lockley discuss how to lead quality.
As the testing world sings the praises of automation, how do you speak to the necessity of manual testing?
Maryann Lockley Head of QA at Camelot Group: “People have a misconception that you can automate everything. What they don’t understand is that automation is there to facilitate and help. Automation is not the be-all and end-all. You still need manual testers. Automation is there to help us but manual testing will always be there”
Stephen Janaway, VP of Engineering at Bloom & Wild: “Automation is ultimately algorithmic decision making. Automation doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. As humans, we explore software and figure it out, and we do that in an effective way. Automation will tell you what whether the thing you said it was when you wrote the automation is equal to the thing it is now, ignoring everything that might be round it.”
After writing this book, what’s the one thing you want everyone to take away?
Ronald Cummings-John, Co-Founder, Global App Testing: “In order to lead quality, we have to be able to influence the people in our organisation who may not be aligned with us yet. Our ability to influence people is so paramount to creating change.”
Our panellists answer questions from quality leaders in the software industry.
A huge thank you
We would like to say a big thank you to those who attended the event - the turnout was fantastic. We hope you enjoyed the opportunity to foster connections with other like-minded quality leaders, as well as receiving your free copy of our new book, Leading Quality: How Great Leaders Deliver High-Quality Software and Accelerate Growth. Thank you again to our brilliant panellists, who made the evening really special. Please keep an eye on your inboxes for information about our next event, coming soon!
if you would like to be part of the Quality Leaders Network, please get in touch!