How to break a broken test: MoT Weekly – Issue 515

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

📍 Brighton - 30th Sep 2025

What's been happening in the testing, tech and quality engineering MoTaverse?

— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing

Community

Last week we launched a new course for Professional Members. A tester's role in continuous quality. We don't want to only gather and talk, our goal is to take concise action on what we discover. This course is us taking action on our discoveries over the past few months. It's designed to bring you what you need to know in the quickest possible timeframe, created with leading testing and quality experts. There's simply nothing else like it. ❤️

Tara Nelson shares how a deck of cards and Star Wars helped connect a QA community.

This public collection continues to grow: MoT London Meetup — Software Testing and Quality Engineer Meetup. Come along this week, take a photo and add to it!

There are 47 Million Developers in the World. 😮

Seen something interesting? Professional members can add links to the Observatory. 🛰️

Mariem asks, who wants to participate in a virtual MoT running club? 🏃

“Hey Rosie Sherry I found this little gem the other day. Safe to say, TestBash 2 changed my life, and I made several forever friends there. Thank you from the bottom of my cold black heart ❤️”

We're continuing to evolve the Community Stars feature on the MoT site. So many were awarded in April, and more to come in May! Select a profile to view the reason for the star. 🤩

But how are we gonna test this? This Week in Testing, Ep 88 explores key software testing trends, including AI testing strategies, accessibility legislation, disaster recovery planning, and test automation in CI/CD pipelines. Bug congrats to Nataliia Burmei for co-hosting TWiT for the first time. 🏆

Christine Pinto is looking for 3–5 remote teams to join their Design Partner Program. Can you help?

Callum and Chris celebrate their bug mugs.

What’s coming to TestBash in 2025? Two days inside The Dome — our iconic Brighton venue — filled with talks, workshops, and cosmic conversations. Two in-person socials to gather and unwind with the wider Ministry of Testing community. TestBash returns this October — our annual community-powered celebration of testing. Want in at the best value? Super early bird pricing ends 31st May. But this message isn’t just about price tags and dates. Read more.

How many testers are there in the world? 🗺️

Judy asks, what music do you test with?

Career growth

Open to work

Ben Dowen is open to work. If there is one person you'll hire into your engineering team this year, then Ben Dowen is that person! His knowledge is immense. His use of language is kind. His creativity is abundant. Hire him before someone else does.
Dan Ashby is looking for VP of Engineering, Director of Engineering, Director of Quality Engineering, Agile Coach, and Quality Coach roles.

Now hiring

AI Quality Assurance Specialist / Figma / SF/NY.
Leigh Rathbone is recruiting for a Senior Quality Engineer at CAVU. You must be within commuting distance as you must be able to get to the office (Manchester airport).
Daniel Toms is hiring for a Staff SDET role.
"My organisation is looking for a test engineer (Dutch required). Not the same team as I am in, but adjacent, so with opportunities to collaborate, to discuss things, etc." – Joep Schuurkes.
Conor O'Neill's company, iPipeline, is looking for a Group Leader, Quality Management. Bromley, England.

Quality Talks Bitesize - Interviews: The Good, The Bad & How To Prepare with Eamon Droko. We're looking forward to more in the series, Stu Day.

Essentials

Mutation testing, You Aren't Gonna Need It (YAGNI), and Slopsquatting. Definitions you can add to. ✍️

In this live exploratory testing session, Ben Dowen and Brittany Stewart dive into the OWASP Juice Shop — an intentionally vulnerable e-commerce site. Together, they uncover UX flaws, functional bugs, and potential security risks, all while showcasing practical techniques for effective exploratory testing. Shop 'till you DROP; Software Testing Live: Episode 03.

What words have you heard or use only in a software engineering context?

When is testing complete, finished or done? ✅

When QA is not in the room.

If you could give one piece of advice to a beginner in QA automation, what would it be? asks Bharat Varshney.

Breaking the autopilot: How I stopped testing software like a machine by Ujjwal Kumar Singh. Great to see Ujjwal's first article on the MoT site. Bug congrats! 🤩

Quality Engineering

Jit Gosai describes the three mindsets of a Quality Engineer.

Join hosts Alessandra Moreira, Royalee Martin and Veronika Pliusnina as they explore the role of quality in software engineering. In this episode of Engineering Quality, we explore essential testing strategies for software engineers, focusing on shift-left testing and the automation pyramid.

Continuous Quality

New course: A tester’s role in continuous quality. Build quality into every step of the software lifecycle with the whole team involved.

Updated: The Community's Guide to Continuous Quality. ♾️

Leading with Quality

The quality space is evolving. This presents difficult challenges, with it also comes immense opportunity. The world is changing. Technology is becoming more complex. We need to innovate our ways, by exploring together. This is why we're leading with quality, and you can too.

Strategy

“Cognitive biases are an Achilles heel for development teams. Our biases put us in a box of what we already know, so our test coverage is limited to that box as well.” – Jenna Charlton.

How do you test for “rare atmospheric phenomenon”? 🌬️

Who does the 'validation'? by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin.

Jemma Wells reminds us that pair programming is hard (and that’s ok).

How do you deal with too many combinatorial test scenarios? asks Christophe Corbel.

This newsletter is kindly supported by BrowserStack

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