The Quality Trail: February 2025 QA News
From the Desk of the Editor
February always feels like the month we get our feet back under us after the holidays. Our teams are all back from holiday time off and plans for the coming year are in place. This makes it a great time to set new strategies and goals for the year ahead and find time to remind yourself what you love about testing. We hope this round-up of what to read and watch gives you new ideas and inspiration to keep you going and find just a bit of that special testing magic to get you through the month.
– The QualityLogic Editorial Team
What’s Inside
Every month we’ll share:
- What to read and watch now
- News from around the industry
- Upcoming events
- Speaking opportunities of note
- And other great content
As always, let us know if you think we’ve missed something, or share the link with your colleagues or partners who may benefit from some or all of this information. You can also sign up to receive these testing updates via email.
Read and Watch
- Lisa Crispin gave us a new book to read! Check out her review of Noemí Ferrera’s book How to Test a Time Machine and then go read the book yourself
- Have you been struggling with your automation strategy? Manish Saini is proposing shift-down testing that brings your tests closer to the code to reduce flakiness, increase speed, and make your automation strategy more reliable with less maintenance required.
- Alan Page encourages us to lead with transparency and authenticity to improve the psychological safety of our teams
- Have you considered getting into conference speaking? Cassandra Leung has suggestions to help with your first CFPs.
- The team at Sauce Labs asks the question if AI is living up to the hype in the latest edition of their podcast Test Case Scenario
- Identifying what metrics matter most for application quality is one of the bigger challenges QA leads and managers face. Aya Akl shares some straightforward advice to help you develop metrics for your mobile application
- Alessandra Moreira wants to help you elevate the role of testing in engineering organizations and shift from being a gatekeeper to a strategic advisor.
Industry News
Idera launched Sembi which brings together the best of their quality management tools under one umbrella. Randy Jacops, CEO of Idera believes this will be a win for teams, “With development cycles accelerating and technologies like AI and automation adding complexity, maintaining quality and security has never been more challenging. Sembi was created to make quality solutions easier to try, implement, and use. By simplifying access and empowering teams to deploy and manage tools independently, we’re enabling a future where building high-quality software at scale is faster and more achievable than ever.”
Upcoming Events
- Test Automation Days, March 5 – 6 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands
- Testing Peers Conference, March 15 in Nottingham, UK
- Paris TestConf, March 15 in Paris, France
- STAREast, April 27 – May 2 in Orlando, Florida
- SoCraTes UK, May 29 – June 1 in Oxford, UK
- Nordic Testing Days, June 5 – 7 in Tallinn, Estonia (NTD)
- EuroStar, June 3 – 6 in Edinburgh, Scotland
- Save the Date! The Association for Software Testing’s CAST Conference is returning August 25 – 27 in Salt Lake City, Utah
Open Speaking Opportunities
- Leeds Testing Atelier, May 13 in Leeds, UK
- Testμ Conference 2025, August 19 – 21 (Virtual).
- Association for Software Testing CAST 2025, August 25 – 27 in Salt Lake City, UT
- Test Society Lisbon Portugal, October 10: Email proposals to: testsocietyconf@gmail.com
- Testing United, November 13 – 14, Milan, Italy
- Agile Testing Days, November 24 – 27, Potsdam, Germany
That’s All for Now!
That’s a wrap for this month’s edition of the Quality Trail! We hope you found something that sparked your curiosity, inspired a new approach, or simply reminded you why testing is such an exciting field. If something stood out to you, or if there’s a topic you’d love to see covered in a future issue, let us know. And don’t forget to share this newsletter with fellow testers who might find it useful.
Until next time, keep testing, keep learning, and keep pushing for quality!
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