Have you heard of PICNIC issues? MoT Weekly – Issue 512

Where does the problem exist? Read a roundup of news, events and ideas from the testing, QA and quality engineering community in this week's MoT Weekly.

Have you heard of PICNIC issues? MoT Weekly – Issue 512 image
Like Bookmark Add to collection

This newsletter is kindly supported by Squish

Simplify Cross-Platform UI Testing with Squish.
Squish makes it easier than ever to automate tests across all major platforms, including desktop, web, mobile and more! Say goodbye to manual testing bottlenecks and hello to smoother, faster releases. Learn how Squish can transform your testing strategy and increase your team’s efficiency.

 

 

What's been happening in the testing, QA and quality engineering MoTaverse? Lass uns gehen!

— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing

 

Community

MoT Professional Membership: For the advancement of software testing and quality engineering. A deep dive into how we've been expanding our MoT Professional Membership and how you can get involved too. Join this Ask Me Anything thread to ask MoT CEO and founder, Rosie Sherry. a question.

Sharing ideas at Ministry of Testing is already great, but getting badges while doing it makes it even better. These badges reflect my contributions, with each one reminding me of insightful conversations and valuable learning moments. One of my favorites is the Meme Maker badge, which I earned for adding some humor to the testing space. Nice one, Ujjwal.

Updated: 105 wonderful items from SeleniumConf.

Revisit Live from SeleniumConf with Rosie Sherry and Señor Performo. Learn about MoT's origin story, including Rosie's love for community and testing. Plus, discover how MoT is opening up to recruiters and the wider ecosystem.

Did you know that your community contributions matter? Ministry of Testing loves to share badges to celebrate your contributions: A list of all the MoT badges you can earn.

"I've been in tech for 27 years. I'm guessing people are listening to your show who aren't even 27 years old!" It's back to the 90s with Leigh Rathbone and Gary. Mercury Quality Centre, QTP, Winrunner, Silk Test, Test Director. Remember them? Listen to the latest episode of TestBash & MoT London Meetup host, Gary Shannon's The QA Hype Show. 

Shop 'till you DROP; Learning by watching other testers do their thing helps visualise concepts and gain insight into how the activities of testing are executed. Join Episode 3 of Software Testing Live. Our host Ben Dowen, aka the Full Snack Tester, is joined by the fabulous Brittany Stewart.

New collection: In London we gather, learn and make new testing and quality engineering friends. MoT London Meetup — Software Testing and Quality Engineer Meetup.

The Athens team with Diego Molina, lead developer and organizer of Selenium.

Your co-pilots, Oleksandr Romanov and Demi Van Malcot, beamed live on a very cosmic day — 404 Day. In last week’s adventure across the Testing Galaxy: Conference Reports: First-hand insights from SeleniumConf Valencia and the MoT London Meetup, with attendees, speakers, and lots of community-powered rocket fuel: How crucial will the MCP approach be for AI Agents? TWiT Ep 85. Plus, set a reminder for Friday's This Week in Testing with new co-host Mariem SAFI. 🤩

🌟 WOW, we did it again! What a night! I’m lost for words (and that doesn’t happen often!).

Had a great time speaking briefly at the Ministry of Testing London meetup. Amazing work by Gary Shannon and the whole team, well done.

Did you celebrate 404 day like Dalbir Sehmbi?

"What an amazing time. Meet some great people." And we're so glad to have met you, too, Deji Ogunkolati.

 

Career Growth 

Job moves

  • Kind words from Ady Stokes: "Huge bug congrats to Jane D'Cruze for starting her new role tomorrow. They are lucky to have such a brilliant person onboard."

Now hiring

  • New role from Gabbi Trotter. Test Analyst- Cambridgeshire. Functional Testing /Automated Testing/ Agile. Up to £37k, Hybrid working in Cambridgeshire. Local applicants only please, no visa sponsorship on offer. Contact her direct for more info.
  • Join Clare Norman at COOP, Senior Quality Coach role, remote first, part-time, contract role until April 2026.
  • Part-time remote testing role
  • Senior QA analyst roles (FTC for 12 months)
  • Automation QA, 6 month contract, UK.

Open to work

What can we do to avoid burnout in the QA/QE field?

Hannah Reynolds shares some illuminating stats about the current state of the UK Tech job market.

Revenge of the junior developer.

 

Essentials

Have you heard of PICNIC issues?

Quality Attributes – those pesky “non-functional” requirements by Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory.

As quality and testing professionals, what kind of work / tasks do you deliberately choose not to do, or do very little of?

"You could plausibly run many different exploratory testing sessions, potentially within the same day, but I'd always want to keep checking back in with my team to make sure that the things that I'm finding out are relevant, are the most interesting things, are the things that are going to be the most important." Hear and read more advice like this from Ben Dowen and many more. Discover the MoT Software Testing Essentials Certificate (STEC). 🤩 

 

Quality Engineering

"Understanding [the] cultural landscape is essential for driving meaningful, lasting improvements in quality engineering." – Chris Armstrong.

We gathered to explore what quality engineering means for our profession.

 

Quality Coaching

What key factors influence management’s belief that Quality Coaching is essential for both individual growth and overall team development?

Christine Pinto’s 4.04 Superpowers of a Quality Coach landed on the MoTaverse!! Christine shares four superpowers (+1) that have helped her evolve from a gatekeeper to an enabler.

Supernova Showdown: the realities of Quality Coaching models. Our guests Clare Norman, Shweta Jaju and Aj Wilson, shared the QC models at their companies. Hosted by Ben Dowen with much wrestling-match gusto.

The Testing Planet beamed another one via mission control! Cosmic conversation: the possibilities of Quality Coaching with Callum Akehurst-Ryan and Kat Obring. Among many things, I enjoyed how much space Callum and Kat gave each other throughout the convo. Lots of building on what the previous person just shared. It was very cool. And it is very cool.

Bookmark this collection: Exploring Quality Coaching - The Testing Planet - Episode 10. 🪐

 

Continuous testing

What is continuous testing? And what do testing professionals have to say about it? Explore: The Community's Guide to Continuous Testing.

 

 

Calling ALL leaders for a one-day educational experience to help expand quality engineering and testing practices.

Leading With Quality

📍 Brighton - 30th Sep 2025

 

 

Tooling

🛠️ Tool of the week: Squish

If you never used cy.intercept command, you should. If you are using it a lot, maybe take a look at the new plugin cypress-rest-easy. – Gleb Bahmutov.

An observation from James Lyndsay that might tell us something about what lies beneath the tools we use directly.

Anshita Bhasin describes how to turn any GitHub repo into an interactive visual diagram.

 

Automation

Testing cloud applications without breaking the bank: Testcontainers and LocalStack by Fernando Teixeira - Discover cost-saving strategies and tools that'll improve your automated tests for cloud applications.

Test Automation As You Go: Redefining The Definition Of Done For Quality Software by Louise Gibbs.

I’m also currently going through the Foundation Certificate in Test Automation from Ministry of Testing, which has a section on tool selection.  The timing is a happy coincidence, and I thought it would be nice to share a real example of tool evaluation and selection. Salesforce UI Automation: POM vs UTAM vs TestZeus Hercules by Cassandra H. Leung.

Kyle Parris earned a MoT Foundation Certificate in Test Automation. Bug congrats. 🏆

 

Security

Brian Fehrman's Getting Started with AI Hacking: Part 1.

Shruti Kulkarni shares an OWASP Education and Training Committee update.

 

Strategy

TDD vs BDD: Choosing the Right Testing Approach for Your Development Team by Sebastian Polzin.

 

Measurement

Daria Kotelenets shares their top 3 useless quality metrics and what to measure instead.

 

AI

What AI-powered testing tools have you found to be most impactful in your work? asks Mariem SAFI.

Why the Copilot Route Is a Flawed Strategy for Software Testing by Stephen Feloney.

 

Just for fun

When you don't want to miss the event you come with your own copy so that you don't lose access in MOTAVERSE. 😆

That moment we launched MoTaverse.net. 🤭

The MoTaverse comic, coming soon?

A software tester walks into a bar. Thanks for sharing on the MoT Slack, Scout Burghardt. 😃

 

A happy-looking man stands on a stage addressing a seated audience, with a large screen displaying camera footage of the audience. A duck, bug and seagull character have been added to the image.

Eamon's first 99 second talk at MoT London

 

🗓️ Events

Keep checking the events page for the most up-to-date info.

 

🚀 Continuous Call for Contributions

Expand the MoTaverse! Share your stories and support everyone's career growth. Talks, articles, meetups, conversations, courses and more! Submit an idea today.

Plus, what could you pick from this list? Discover more than 50 ways we recognise individual contributions to the community. 🤩

Simon Tomes
Simon Tomes
he/him
Community Lead at Ministry of Testing
Hello, I'm Simon. Since 2003 I've had various roles in testing, tech leadership and coaching. I believe in the power of collaboration, creativity and community.
Subscribe to our newsletter
We'll keep you up to date on all the testing trends.