What a week in beautiful Edinburgh for EuroSTAR 2025 – I had a great time with the team from KPMG who sponsored a booth in the Expo for the first time. As in other times in my career, I am so lucky to have passionate testers to work with who care about our craft and community, and the team and EuroStar Conferences was amazing to work with in getting us over the line in time!

The theme this year was “AI on Trial”, and through what I observed and conversations I had over the week, which was an inspired choice as it really feels like we are at an inflection point in the software testing business. René van Veldhuijzen‘s “FOMO Sapiens” could not have been more spot on with the mood right now, as we careen back and forth between “AI-first-all-the-time-bandwagons” and AI skeptics being dismissed with the feverish pitch of tulip speculators!

So what were some of my observations and take aways from the week in Scotland:

Very happy to share that I have been awarded Chartered status by the Chartered Management Institute. Thanks to KPMG for sponsoring me and everyone in the Quality Engineering and Testing team for the support!

This is a great talk from Michael Bolton about how software testers should critically think and talk about AI in testing.

IMO it is our responsibility as testing professionals to cast a (very) sceptical eye on any claim, but even MORE so in the age of AI hype…enjoy!

Here’s my podcast with James Bach he referenced: QR Podcast – James Bach | Quality Remarks Keith Klain

Happy to be included in the 272nd issue of Software Testing Weekly – thanks, Dawid Dylowicz!

These days, your philosophy about testing is more important than ever and a differentiator in the software testing market. Santosh Tuppad has been leading from the front since I first met him as a rising star at Moolya and through his workshops on security testing with me in the Bronx or in Germany with the Afghan Girls Robotics team.

Come take a listen as we talk about the current state of testing skills training in our business, cyber security in the age of AI, and travel far off the beaten path into philosophy, true happiness as a tester, and how many cheese fries is enough…enjoy!

If someone you work with is making the following statement, “We don’t need to hire any more testers, we can do this all with AI!”, I may not know that person, but I can tell you a couple things about them…

– They are a deeply unserious – they clearly have not thought about or researched anything related to AI, software engineering, software quality, software testing or risk management.

– They don’t care about people – I have yet to see this “thinking out loud” BS not being used as a thin veneer to cover the age old question of “how do I get rid of all these people!”.

– They shouldn’t be responsible for anything to do with producing products that impact society – This is the kind of “blue sky” questions that to try to “challenge the status quo” with no regard whatsoever to the impact or harm caused to real people and end up “inventing” busses again.

As before, where the only “shifting left” was into vendors pockets from unsuspecting clients, you’re not dumb – you’re being misled.

And just to get in front of the “youreonlyprotectingyerjobs” AI fanboys – you’re goddamn right I am!

I care a LOT about the people testing software and systems every day, and I can tell immediately if you’ve never had to live with that responsibility.

Do better…

The following is a post I wrote for the EuroSTAR blog as KPMG UK are going to be at the expo this year up in Scotland…hope to see you there!

Principles Drive Trust in AI

The pace that “artificial intelligence” (AI) is being incorporated into software testing products and services creates immense ethical and technological challenges for an IT industry that’s so far out in front of regulation, they don’t even seem to be playing the same sport.

It’s difficult to keep up with the shifting sands of AI in testing right now, as vendors search for a viable product to sell, and most testing clients I speak to these days haven’t begun incorporating an AI element to their test approach and frankly, the distorted signal coming from the testing business hasn’t helped. What I’m hearing from clients are big concerns around data privacy and security, transparency on models and good evidence, and the ethical issues of using AI in testing.

I’ve spent a good part of my public career in testing talking about risk, how to communicate it to leadership, and what good testing contributes to that process in helping identify threats to your business. So I’m not here to tell you “no” to AI in testing, but talk about how KPMG is trying to manage through the current mania and what we think are the big rocks we need to move to get there with care and at pace.

I first got to know James in 2014 when the Context-Driven community was organising (including your truly) against the rent seeking of ISO 29119 test standard, and as co-chair of CAST for the Association for Software Testing, I invited him to give a talk on Standards – promoting quality or restricting competition?

His blog is a “must read” for any serious software tester, and his clear-eyed work on investigating the Post Office Horizon IT Scandal (including his submission) is the benchmark our community should be striving for when it comes to integrity, ethics, and professional standards.

Listen in as we discuss what went wrong at the Post Office, good evidence, the role of government in technology, the brewing collision between regulation and IT, and how after so long in this business you can keep your teeth sharp! Enjoy!

Links from discussion: What is Good Evidence – Griffin Jones EU fines Apple €500M and Meta €200M for breaking Europe’s digital rules DORA Act EU AI Act UK Murder Prediction US Autism Database

Just to be clear about something: if you are selling or advocating for some sort of AI in software testing tool, framework, agent, model, or defect-predict-O-nator and you are NOT focusing primarily on safety, security, or HARM – you are NOT doing your job.

The testing industry has practically abdicated its role in this regard, so it is up to individuals to be the vanguard and it is not panic, job insecurity, or resistance to change driving their valid concerns.

I am seeing some very senior people with lots of influence making IMO/E poor decisions on how to frame where we we are with AI in testing – what it is, what it isn’t, what it can do, and what it shouldn’t.

For even more clarity, if you are dismissing concerns about artificial intelligence in testing, quality engineering, or test automation as any of those things you are partially responsible for what happens when those tools are used to create software and systems that do harm.

Period.