Coventry Meetup
About our speakers: Phillipa Jennings
• QA Engineer at Arbor Education
About the talk:
Continuous Quality practices are vital for building software that truly meets user and business needs. Yet, the drive for automation first or 100% automation can overshadow deeper insights into quality. In this talk, Philippa Jennings challenges the myth that automation alone guarantees speed and confidence, showing how it can actually hinder quality.
Watch Philippa explain how overreliance on automation can create blind spots, reduce collaboration, and shift focus away from user outcomes. She shares practical ways to restore balance using two models, Dan Ashby’s Information Model and Stuart Day’s 6Qs of Quality, to help teams ask better questions, explore risks, and align testing activities with what really matters.
By the end of the talk, you’ll understand how to embed Continuous Quality practices that value learning, curiosity, and collaboration just as much as tooling.
By the end of this session, you'll be able to:
- Apply the principles of continuous quality to balance automation with exploration and human insight
- Use Dan Ashby’s Information Model to identify knowns, unknowns, and areas that need deeper investigation
- Adopt Stuart Day’s 6Qs of Quality to guide conversations and align testing with desired outcomes
- Evaluate automation goals to ensure they support, rather than replace, broader quality practices
- Demonstrate how to shift from “automation first” to “quality first” thinking within your team
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Please arrive from 6:00pm so that we can get you signed in with our Security Front Desk, and then escorted to our new Auditorium, where you can get settled and chat with everyone before the talk.
After the talk there is the opportunity for all attendees to take part in 99 Second Talks, where they can use the time to trial a presentation they plan to give, ask for help to the community, share something they are passionate about, virtually anything they can think of.
Finally, there will be complimentary food/drinks and networking until roughly 8:30 - 9:00pm (but you don't have to stay that late if you don't want to).
18:00 - 18:30 Guest arrival and networking
18:30 - 18:35 Intro & Welcome
18:35 - 19:15 Talk: Why Automation is Holding Back Continuous Quality
19:15 - 19:30 Q&A followed by 99 second talks
19:30 - 19:35 Thank You's and meeting wrapup
19:35 - 20:45 Drinks, networking and nibbles
