Emily O'Connor
Emily O'Connor
Principal Quality Engineer
She/Her
Technical leader with a sixth sense for bugs. Avid learner, passionate about translating "dev-speak" to enable teams adopt automation and AI-accelerated quality engineering. I believe great software starts with user-focused problem solving, and automation should surface the bugs that PMs actually care about fixing.
đ MoTaBirthday | September 12, 2023
Open To
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Write
CV Reviews
Podcasting
Mentor
Mentee
Nice to see my former SBG colleagues Steve and Alex in Leeds, with Ady as our host.
31 Jul
I loved seeing my Ministry of Testing profile being featured in the Testing Planet at TestBash, through a spot the difference on the centre spread! This was great for my career as it immediately b...
28 Jul
On the 15th of January 2026 myself and Ujjwal Kumar Singh joined a call and pressed record. We were curious to see what would happen. A few weeks later Iâd done the same with Neil Taylor and Clare ...
6 Jul
Master the RICCE framework to transition from manual testing to AI-augmented automation by leveraging structured prompting and the Playwright MCP agent ecosystem.
9 Apr
Apply the "5 Whys" technique to both technical debugging and organisational workflows to uncover deep-seated root causes and implement sustainable continuous improvements.
31 Mar
Evaluate the shift from "automate all" to "review all" by using AI agents for test plans while applying human-led ACE feedback to ensure code quality and business relevance.
2 Apr
Celebrate the creativity and courage of testers and quality engineers as they share stories, lessons, and ideas in just 99 seconds.
20 Oct
Quality
Most people think about product quality when they hear the word quality, and thatâs obviously very important but, the quality of how we deliver that product is also important. We cannot have product quality without a high quality process.
Fuzz testing
Fuzzing (or fuzz testing) is an automated software testing technique that feeds continuous streams of invalid, unexpected, or randomly mutated data into a program's inputs to see if it will crash, leak memory, or trigger an unhandled exception.A fuzzer is a program which injects automatically semi-random data into a program/stack and detect bugs. The data-generation part is made of generators, and vulnerability identification relies on debugging tools. Generators usually use combinations of static fuzzing vectors (known-to-be-dangerous values), or totally random data.A fuzzer would try combinations of attacks on:
numbers (signed/unsigned integers/floatâŚ)
chars (urls, command-line inputs)
metadata : user-input text (id3 tag)
pure binary sequences
A common approach to fuzzing is to define lists of âknown-to-be-dangerous valuesâ (fuzz vectors) for each type, and to inject them or recombinations.
for integers: zero, possibly negative or very big numbers
for chars: escaped, interpretable characters / instructions (ex: For SQL Requests, quotes / commandsâŚ)
for binary: random ones
Please refer to OWASPâs Fuzz Vectorâs resource for real-life fuzzing vectors examples and methodology.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Similar to software composition analysis, Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools scan source code before it runs and without executing it (âwhite-box testingâ).SAST scanners search for âdangerousâ patterns, that match security flaws, for example SQL injections, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and hardcoded API keys/credentials. SAST tools are most effective when they are used, and their output applied before code is merged.
Commit Hook
A commit hook is a script that git executes automatically before or after a specific event in the version control lifecycle like committing, pushing or merging.You can have pre-commit hooks (prevention) and/or post-commit hooks (notifications or automation). A pre-commit hook is arguably more common, running after entering a git commit, with the cabability to abort the commit if certain quality standards aren't met such as linting rules, unit or smoke tests. If the hook outcome passes, git proceeds with the commit as normal, if not, git immediately aborts the commit, and the code stays in your staging area so you can fix it.
OSCAR Coaching
The OSCAR mnemonic is a tool that can be used to help understand the context around the problem, when coaching others to consider testing and quality.This model helps quality coaches guide their clients towards achieving their desired outcomes by focusing on their current situation, exploring their choices, taking action, and reflecting on their progress. By providing your testing expertise, you can guide them towards efficient strategies for achieving success.OSCAR stands for;
Outcome â help your stakeholder to define their âdestinationâ, asking them open questions such as âwhat would success look like?â or âwhat would you like to achieve in this release?â
Situation â help your stakeholder to define their current situation (the starting point).
Choices â generate as many alternative choices as possible and raise awareness around the consequences of each possible choice.
Actions â help the team member to clarify their next steps forwards and take responsibility for their own action plan, âwhat needs to be in place for this testing?â, âwhat will you do next?â and âwho could support this regression testing?â
Review â outline the conversation that has taken place up to now, create an ongoing process of review and evaluation so that if X needs testing in the future or Y goes wrong again, the team is equipped to perform hands-on testing or root cause analysis on their own. Ask open questions with curiosity to learn âare the actions moving you towards your outcome?â
Comments
(14)
Slack bug?
đ
Great Summer Social event
Nice picture of Mr Steve Mellor :)
Security Shifting Left in Lovable
Highlighting the security problems sounds like a good feature, but it might be too little too late as folks just want to publish! I wonder if it was a reaction to this news piece: https://www.ministryoftesting.com/satellites/lovable-vibe-coding-security-crisis-exposed
Test the numbers, a cheat sheet
Is this list trying to be the numerical counter part to The Big List of Naughty Strings?
https://www.ministryoftesting.com/satellites/big-list-of-naughty-strings?s_id=19042891
Roundtable: Exploring Quality with Templates and Charters
Intro to "problem statement" 2:30
Melissa on the one page test plan 6:50
Natallia on prioritisation, scope and constraints 9:40
Zooming out from the implementation 17:20
Personas and getting the customers perspective 20:30
Standardisation and templates 24:20
Hundreds Of Anthropic Chatbot Transcripts Showed Up In Google Search
(www.forbes.com)
26 Jul
Microsoft SharePoint under attack via new exploit (CVE-2026-50522)
(www.cybersecuritydive.com)
21 Jul
Observatory Enabler
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about 16 hours ago
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about 16 hours ago
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about 16 hours ago
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about 16 hours ago
Learner completed your lesson
5.2.0 of MoT Software Quality Engineering Certificate
Community Star
about 19 hours ago
Interests (10)
automation-tools
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bug-reports
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bugs
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exploratory-testing
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playwright-best-practices
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processes
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process-improvement
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reading
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team-enablement
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upskilling
