This Week in Quality

Simon and Demi host a high-energy wins episode, starting with Demi’s week of intense data testing and Simon’s reflections on recent MoTaverse milestones, including Diana’s first 10K, 45 Call for Insights, new company chapters, and fresh writing prompts for community moments. Nadja joins to share a big life and career move to Belgium, while Rosie reflects on London Community Week, changing communit...

Simon kicks off this Hot Takes edition with a tour through recent MoTaverse updates, including career growth resources, motivation, quality tooling silos, AI’s impact on definitions of ready/done, and new learning tools. The main debate centres on whether relying on AI chatbots is reducing human knowledge sharing in the community, with Oleksandr and Gary adding reflections on AI, culture, silos, a...

Simon and Judy open with updates from the MoTaverse, including the Leading with AI event, new moments from the community, Women in Testing, and a Software Testing Live session on risk. The main conversation explores the idea of grieving change in tech: the fear, sadness, frustration, and identity shifts that come with AI, shifting roles, and changing workplace cultures. Community members join to s...

Simon and Demi reflect on the second video-enabled episode of This Week in Quality, with plenty of live experimentation, technical glitches, and community challenges along the way. The conversation ranges from new MoTaverse content on loop engineering, test data, career growth, and models, before digging into negative testing and why the “unhappy path” is often a core part of the system’s expected...

This Week in Quality enters a new, cameras-on format - complete with connection glitches and live tool testing! The main theme is high value activities: how experienced quality folks identify the work that creates outsized impact (like exploratory testing, analysis review, and risk-based coaching) versus routine tasks that can be delegated. Gary and Preeti add a practical lens on human accountabil...

Episode 137 of This Week in Quality opens with playful banter about heat, workshops vs meetings, and the reality of notification fatigue. The conversation quickly heats up with hot takes on “done is better than perfect” lightning learning, how tooling layers add complexity to testing, and why understanding the system matters before measuring it. The standout segment is Ady’s blunt argument that ac...

What does it really mean to write clean code? And does it even matter if nobody uses your product? This week, Demi and Simon explore the tensions between readability, legacy codebases, and shipping something that works. Rolf brings 30+ years of perspective on why clean code is a mindset, not a rulebook, and Nadja shares how the Berlin chapter is tackling the AI wave. From code smells and SonarQube...

In this episode of This Week in Quality, host Simon Tomes is joined by Shawn Vernier and Ady Stokes to explore how epistemology – the philosophy of knowledge – shapes everyday testing and quality decisions. Drawing on questions from the MoTaverse community, they dig into what testers can really “know” about a system, how beliefs, assumptions, and evidence interact, and why the reliability of our i...

Ady kicks things off with a reminder that we don’t celebrate ourselves enough, then invites everyone to share their weekly wins. Simon highlights two fresh Call for Insights launches (with Lauren Lassie and Gary Hawkes) and bigs up Rahul’s AI Guardrails masterclass. Ady shares his own wins: progress on book models using NotebookLM as a thinking partner, upcoming talks, and - massively - three Leed...

Co-hosts Simon and Oleksandr theme the episode around influencing without authority, inspired by Suzanne Abdurahman’s work on influence in the Software Quality Engineering Certificate and recent community conversations. They unpack what influence looks like day-to-day, why “being present” matters, and how to adapt your message to different stakeholders. The group also explores what happens when yo...

Judy and Clare kick off “Hot Take TWIQ Day” with wins (mobile automation in the cloud!) and community joys (finding your “match” in the MoTaverse), before diving into spicy opinions: should old bugs be deleted or archived, why manual testing is still a creative superpower, and how AI changes the thinking required of quality professionals. As the conversation heats up, the group tackles whether dev...

Diana drops out of the MoTaverse (and returns via incognito mode) just in time for a deep dive into MoTaCon: what it is, why the name matters, and how the lineup reflects the MoTaverse's shift from “testing-only” to a broader tech conference with quality at the core. Along the way, the hosts celebrate fresh SQEC-qualified members, explain how MoT profiles and year-round community participation sha...

It’s a busy, energizing TWIQ: Natalia returns with fresh experiences from her new job, including tackling mobile testing, planning an accessibility audit, and levelling up her AI learning through the new AI chapter. Simon spotlights recent Call for Insights conversations, then announces the big milestone: the Software Quality Engineering Certificate is now fully live with all modules and the exam...

In this episode of This Week in Quality (Friday 27 March 2026), Simon Tomes is joined by Judy Mosley for a joy-fuelled tour through what’s been lighting up the MoTaverse. They kick off with a relatable tester classic: time zones and daylight-saving bugs, including a behind-the-scenes nod to MoT’s own chapter scheduling whack-a-mole. Judy highlights an Observatory gem from Patrick Peirl’s on why co...

In episode 128 of This Week in Quality (Friday 20 March 2026), Ben Dowen and Simon Tomes catch up on conference learnings, community experiments, and a fresh way to share knowledge across the MoTaverse. Ben opens with reflections from Testing Peers Conference, including a practical workshop takeaway on Playwright agents, and Simon nudges him toward turning those learnings into a MoTaverse Moment....

In this episode of This Week in Quality (Friday 13 March 2026), Simon Tomes is joined by co-host Demi Van Malcot, and the pair kick off with an unexpected theme: demos that actually go right. Demi shares the rare joy of a full, 20-minute end-to-end demo where nothing broke, and Heleen later echoes the streak with her own successful demo, helped by a hard-won team rule: no last-minute database clea...

In episode 126 of This Week in Quality (Friday 6 March 2026), Ben Dowen is joined by Rosie Sherry to unpack recent professional membership changes in the MoTaverse, why they’re happening now, and what they’re meant to protect and enable. Rosie walks through what remains available on the free tier, including core MoT profiles, the Club, and chapter events, plus the ability to mark yourself as Open...

In episode 125 of This Week in Quality (Friday 27 February 2026), co-hosts Nataliia Burmei and Eamon Droko welcome the community for a wide-ranging conversation about careers, confidence, and the support systems that make tough work moments easier to navigate. Nat opens with a simple code of conduct reminder, “Be nice, be human, be supportive, be engaging, be fun,” setting the tone for a chat that...

In episode 124 of This Week in Quality, host Ady Stokes kicks off with a birthday celebration for co-host Demi Van Malcot, a quick time-warp reflection on how fast the show has grown, and a week packed with community energy. Demi shares a bumpy “birthday week in quality” that includes a test data crisis, a perfectly-timed article on cognitive load, and the buzz of the Epic Test Quest launch party....

In this Friday 13th episode of This Week in Quality, first-time co-hosts Oleksandr Romanov and Claire Norman lean into the date’s reputation and explore the superstitions that quietly shape how teams test, release, and demo software. Claire opens with a collaboration win, bringing designers and engineers closer together and proving that small invitations can unlock earlier, better involvement. The...

In this episode of This Week in Quality, Simon welcomes a returning legend to the virtual stage as Deanna comes back from maternity leave and dives straight into everything that’s evolved across the MoTaverse. Together they turn the chat into a rapid-fire “what changed while Deanna was away?” tour, calling out highlights like Into the MoTaverse, My Reports, company pages, thank-you stars and badge...

In episode 121 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Simon Holmes and Judy Mosley settle in (coffee vs. missing tea!) and zoom in on how the community is shaping the year ahead through goals, risk thinking, and career growth moments worth celebrating. They highlight the #MyGoals memory-post challenge on ministryoftesting.com (and the Goal Setter badge), reflecting on how different people approach goal...

In episode 120 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Eamon Droko and Simon Tomes focus on the power of sharing as a learning strategy, in Eamon’s first time co-hosting the show. They kick off with a look at Eamon’s new Into the MoTaverse episode, touching on themes of showing up, bias and inclusivity in hiring, and the value of talking openly about your day-to-day work. Simon reflects on how speaking...

In episode 119 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Demi Van Malcot and Simon Tomes explore the theme of goals and how sharing them in public can spark motivation, support and community. The episode begins with a busy week in quality updates and a look at the Ministry of Testing goals challenge, where people post goals on ministryoftesting.com, tag them with my-goals and earn badges for goal setter,...

In episode 118 of This Week in Quality, co-hosts Ben Dowen and Simon Tomes are joined by community members Gary Hawkes, Maithilee Chunduri and Richard Adams for the first live session of 2026. Recorded on Friday 9 January, the episode opens with New Year energy, MoT goals, badges and “fill up your MoT profile” prompts, plus a reminder about the MoT Ambassadors programme and all the ways people can...