Talk

Takeaway 1: Quality is universal. Whether you’re ordering food, placing a bet, or managing money, the fundamentals—early involvement, automation, and defect prevention—always apply.

But QA isn’t just about writing and running tests. At Allianz, I spoke with the claims and accounts departments to understand how they used the system, then shaped my testing around their real workflows. At OpenBet I highlighted to the product owner the importance of testing against the configurations the client will use in production to ensure our testing is valid. 

In both cases, relationships mattered as much as tests. By listening, asking questions, and building trust, I ensured testing represented how people would actually use the system.

Takeaway 2: QA ≠ just testing. Great QA is about risk, requirements, and relationships. Building trust across the business helps surface risks before they become defects.

Finally, across each new industry, I may not have known the terminology or used the tools and processes before, but I came to the role with an open mind and curiosity which meant I wasn’t afraid to ask questions and play around with the system to understand how it worked. At OpenBet I’d never worked in the betting industry before so I needed to learn the terminology and understand the concepts of third party feed providers and set-up in the trading system in order to publish events to the website. My curiosity—asking who used the product, how they used it, what issues they had with it and where issues appeared most often —proved far more valuable than prior domain expertise.

Takeaway 3: Mindset over domain. Industry knowledge can be learned. What matters more is curiosity, adaptability, and the courage to advocate for quality