Talk

My journey in testing has often felt like stepping into a time machine. When I worked on an automotive infotainment project earlier in my career, the tools were clunky and the approach was rigid. Testers were gatekeepers at the end of the line, blamed for delays but powerless to change much. Fast forward to an energy sector project years later, and agile was the norm. Testing had moved upstream, but testers were often told to blend in so much that their independent voice was lost. Most recently, while working on an automotive driver assistance platform, AI promised to generate test cases in seconds. That looked impressive on dashboards, but the quality of those cases was shallow and often misaligned with real risk.

Each of these phases taught me that while technology changes, the fundamental challenges stay the same. Deadlines still pressure teams to cut corners. Leaders still chase metrics that do not always reflect real quality. Shiny tools often hide old mistakes wrapped in new packaging. The car infotainment project showed me the limits of treating testing as a final hurdle. The energy platform taught me that collaboration cannot come at the cost of independence. The driver assistance project revealed how AI can dazzle but also mislead.

By connecting these lessons, I now see testing as a cycle of patterns. History repeats itself when we forget it. My message at PeersCon is simple: testers need to honor the craft that got us here, adapt it to modern tools, and carry forward the values that machines cannot replace. Curiosity, critical thinking, and ethical judgment remain timeless.

This talk is for testers and leaders alike. 3 Immediate Next-Day Applications of this talk are

1. Review your current test strategy and identify if any “old mistakes” are showing up in new forms.

2. Use retrospectives to ask, “What patterns are we repeating?” instead of just “What went wrong?”

3. Add a short session in your team to connect historical lessons to today’s practices.