The grift in the software testing business never ends…

I’ve spent a LOT of time lately reviewing docs, sitting through demos, listening to “experts”, and enduring the bombardment of AI slop being hurled from testing vendors and let me tell you – ain’t nothing new under the sun in our industry.

Testing hasn’t changed. Testing hasn’t fallen behind. Testing isn’t the bottleneck. Testing isn’t actually the problem.

**The problem is a vicious cycle of unsustainable rates of change requiring endless system #enshittification to meet the demands of an increasingly pervasive technology ecosystem run by bonus-driven caretaking management.**

But that hasn’t stopped the AI grift from going into overdrive – selling solutions that don’t exist for problems that aren’t real to people who are quite happily using that as cover to fire people they never should have hired in the first place.

If you work in software testing here’s my advice:

– Learn everything you can about AI and the language being bandied about to figure out your entry into that world to use the “right words”. A LOT of what I am seeing is just old concepts being renamed, redescribed, or just hijacked for marketing purposes. Old wine into new skins…

– Learn about test design, experimentation, exploratory testing, and how to TALK ABOUT RISK. These are the skills that have never gone out of demand and will be super important if any of this AI mess gets to production…

– Learn about the regulatory environment as despite my scepticism about enforcement, there are a whole bunch of new implications of what’s real, who’s at fault, and unasked questions about agency and pushing slop to production…

Every bubble bursts (or at least deflates a little) and as I’ve said before, I don’t think all these “early movers” have an advantage over people taking their time for some critical thinking. Frankly, the testing business doesn’t seem to have a clue right now anyway, so concentrate on core skills, learn the lingo, and watch the firings continue (I’m looking at you test automation engineers)…

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, instead of curbing behaviour this will probably just get priced in to using AI slop in your business, just like fines in financial services…

Back at work after spending last week in Brighton delivering part of a workshop on Leading with Quality for the Ministry of Testing and then hung out at Test Bash 2025. I had a great time catching up with old friends and meeting a lot of new people and actually got to listen to the talks which frankly, is a luxury I don’t typically get from being a speaker.

Delivering my part of the Leading with Quality workshop was fun and a little hectic trying to get all the content and discussions into an hour slot, but I think we got there and the feedback has been great (so far). My part was about getting (and keeping) a seat at the table for testers which started with WHY testing doesn’t typically get involved in decisions that affect time, money, or people. Testing is a function of risk management, and the value proposition is context dependent so the quickest way to undermine testing’s credibility (and your own) and common mistakes I see testers make are:

I’m very happy to announce that in March 2026 I’m joining a fantastic line up of keynotes Test Automation Days including:

Anne-Marie Charrett, Principal Automation Testing
Marit van Dijk, Developer Advocate
Richard Bradshaw, Senior Architect, Build & Podcast Producer, The Vernon Richard Show

Early bird tickets are available until November 1, 2025
Hope to see you there! Register HERE

Earlier this month at EuroSTAR in Edinburgh, I was unexpectedly honored with the Testing Excellence Award after being nominated by my team at KPMG. Undeservedly receiving the same award as one of my heroes, Jerry Weinberg, I was also introduced on the evening by one of my mentors and friends Michael Bolton.

As I said on the night, software testing is a team sport, and for over 25 years I’ve been working with some of the best testers from around the globe (12 countries) on countless projects for Fortune 100 companies. One of my most proud achievements in managing the careers of software testers is that my teams have produced a CTO from UC Berkley, 11 Global Heads of QA, 7 Test Directors, 11 Vice Presidents, 2 Global Product Owners, and 2 Heads of Engineering from companies all over the world. 

I have also tried to contribute to the software testing industry body of public knowledge through publishing 100s of articles and interviews on Quality Remarks, LinkedIn, and loads of personal and professional journals/blogs. I’ve also had the privilege to present talks and workshops at testing and technology conferences and meetups all over the world on topics including test strategy, managing test teams, and working with C-level sponsorship including: AST CAST, QAI, EuroSTAR, STARCanada, STAR East, KWSQA, BCS, MOT, ATD, RTC, Copenhagen CT, STP Con, QualityJam, NSTC, Tricentis Accelerate, and expo:QA. 

Happy to be included in the 276th issue of Software Testing Weekly – thanks, Dawid Dylowicz!

My starter pack reading list for AI in software testing…please feel free to add to the list in the comments! We got a lot of work to do friends, being informed is just the start…enjoy!

The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want – Emily Bender and Alex Hanna

Artifictional Intelligence: Against Humanity’s Surrender to Computers – Harry Collins

On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? – Emily Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, Margaret Mitchell

The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity – Parshin Shojaee, Iman Mirzadeh, Keivan Alizadeh, Maxwell Horton, Samy Bengio, Mehrdad Farajtabar

The Pursuit of Fairness in Artificial Intelligence Models: A Survey – Tahsin Kheya, Mohamed Jenek, Sunil Aryal

Against the Commodification of Education – Dagmar Monett, Gilbert Paquet

AI Now Landscape Report – Kate Brennan, Amba Kak, and Dr. Sarah Myers West

Developer Testing in the IDE Patterns Beliefs and Behavior – Beller, Gousios, Panichella, Proksch, Amann, Zaidman

Hiroshima Process International Code of Conduct

Responsible AI: Implement an Ethical Approach in your Organization – Olivia Gambelin 

Full list of my resources here: QR Resources

Ale Moreira is one of my oldest friends in the testing world, we got to know each other when we were elected to the Association for Software Testing Board of Directors together and then hung around in NYC while we worked at various companies and consultancies.

She has always been a fantastic hands-on engineer in testing, and we see a LOT in common when it comes to talking to the business about the value of testing. Her newsletter Road Less Tested is on my list of “must read” testing blogs and she co-hosts the Engineering Quality podcast with a couple of her pals, so listen as we talk selling testing to the business, life after testing “death”, and what it takes to lead quality engineering teams in this brave new world…enjoy!

Links from the chat: Association for Software Testing Mindset – Dr Carol Dweck Thinking Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman Rethinking Expertise – Harry Collins Leading with Quality – Ministry of Testing The Quality Coach’s Handbook – Anne-Marie Charrett

Another one for the AI “what could possibly go wrong” file…

From the article, apparently they want the General Services Administration (GSA) “to operate like a software startup, and proposed a whole-of-government, AI-first strategy to automate much of the work done by federal employees today.”

Aside from not even being able to launch properly without leaking their entire plan on GitHub, it’s pretty clear why there has been an all out assault on State-level AI regulation via a proposed 10-year pause of “any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems.”

Further evidence as well that the majority of AI fanboys are saying the quiet part out loud behind closed doors: AI hype is sold as a way of getting rid of all these damn people…

Buckle up my tester friends, it’s going to be a long, hot summer…

Your regular reminder as apparently, FOMO and euphoria have taken the day:

• Thinking critically about a technology is NOT being AGAINST it…
• Considering safety and harm in a technology’s use is NOT being AGAINST it…
• Being critical of the marketing of a technology is NOT being AGAINST it…
• Having principles and values drive your adoption of technology is NOT being AGAINST it…
• Calling out unverifiable claims used misleadingly to sell a technology is NOT being AGAINST it…

As a software testing community, we can do a LOT better than this and frankly, right now people need us to…