Quality Leaders Network Breakfast of Champions | Testing Trends

On February 20th, tech leaders and senior IT professionals gathered at The Conduit in Mayfair to discuss quality testing trends for 2020 and beyond. This exclusive event was the third in the Quality Leaders Network ‘Breakfast of Champions’ series, and it was a sellout!

Insights from Simon Prior and Ronald Cummings-John

The breakfast featured exceptional guest speakers Simon Prior, Commercial Test Manager at EasyJet and Ronald Cummings-John, co-founder of Global App Testing and author of Leading Quality. Simor Prior is an established thought leader who has worked in various roles across IT from C++ developer to Scrum Master and Build Engineer before finding his passion for testing. He’s worked in various domains from cybersecurity to gaming, and now the airline industry. He also has a popular blog on all things QA here.

Ronald Cummings-John has spent years building companies and writing software. He is an international speaker, author, and co-founder of Global App Testing. When writing Leading Quality, he spoke to leading tech teams from the likes of HelloFresh, Google, Microsoft and more to discuss their views of quality, and how they go about approaching QA in their business.

Our discussion focused on predicting and explaining QA and software testing trends for 2020 and beyond, and a conversation around the best ways to influence internal views of quality in your company.

Top tips from QA thought leaders

Here are just some of our favourite tips we heard throughout the evening.

Question: How do I change attitudes in my team?

“A lot of what I think being a leader of quality is about is expanding the worldview of people inside your company”

- Ronald Cummings-John, Co-Founder and Author of Leading Quality

Question: Is a customer-centric way of looking at QA the way forward?

“There is a trend of people caring more about customer-centric views of quality. You have to look at quality from an external viewpoint to understand how the customer views your product”

- Ronald Cummings-John, Co-Founder and Author of Leading Quality

Question: How do you deal with pushback from customer-centric proposals?

“By making sure we speak the language of the business. Where there is pressure to release quickly and move fast, you need to have the ability to articulate the importance of the QA function to the company in the right way . It’s all about finding people you can persuade to your way of thinking”

- Simon Prior, Commercial Test Manager at EasyJet

Question: What is the importance of exploratory testing in an increasingly automated world?

“One of my biggest bugbears is vendors pushing for 100% automation. Manual testing is still crucial and the investigative side of testing is as deeply important as automation. As automation rises, the human element needs to rise alongside it”

- Simon Prior, Commercial Test Manager at EasyJet

Question: What is the best way to lead quality?

“Being a true leader is about communication paths. You have to persuade people. Most conversations are all about ‘how do you tactically test something?’ and there is not enough conversation about how we lead.”

- Ronald Cummings-John, Co-Founder and Author of Leading Quality

“The only way quality is going to be led is through human communication’

- Simon Prior, Commercial Test Manager at EasyJet

Thank you to speakers and attendees

We would like to say a huge thank you to those who attended this breakfast event. We hope you enjoyed the opportunity to build connections with other like-minded Quality Leaders from across different industries. Thank you again to Simon Prior and Ronald Cummings-John who made the morning so insightful. 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.