TestTalks.AI - The Testing AI Podcast

Micro Focus chief technologist on how AI, computer vision and NLP free testers to focus on what and why, not how.
Don Jackson traces his journey from customer to Micro Focus chief technologist and explores how computer vision and NLP in the UFT family let testers interact with applications visually rather than through the DOM or brittle selectors. He argues AI should recognize objects by their visual characteristics instead of self-healing, and previews next-generation model-based testing that underpins reusable components with any automation type plus risk-based metadata. He champions 'shift everywhere' and a fourth persona (leadership) who should see elevated value rather than scrape Jenkins logs. The conversation covers negative testing, test data generation, SAP package testing, service virtualization and the upcoming Universe event.
**In this episode:**- AI in Testing- Model-Based Testing- Test Automation- Test Data Management- Codeless Automation- API Testing- Test Strategy- QA Leadership
**Guest:** Don Jackson — Chief Technologist, Micro Focus  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “Focus on what and why, not how. Let the tool take care of the how.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #AITesting #ModelBasedTesting #TestAutomation #TestData #CodelessAutomation #APITesting #TestStrategy #QALeadership

Why digital enterprises need modern quality engineering that extends QA further, deeper, wider, and at scale.
This is the polished cut of Niko Mangahas's conversation on modern quality engineering. He argues that decentralizing quality into scrum teams creates quality blind spots, and that a quality strategy and management layer plus an automation shared service are essential to track macro quality risks and quality debt. He defines experience quality as reliable, responsive, intuitive, engaging, and inclusive, spanning performance, usability, A/B, and accessibility testing. With Jonathan Wright he explores shift-left and shift-right, testing in production, continuous validation, observability and anomaly detection, and Black Friday failure scenarios. Niko frames predictability of outcomes and business value as the real goal, with hyper-automation (AI and RPA) as the means to scale QA in four dimensions: further, deeper, wider, and at scale.
**In this episode:**- QA Leadership- Test Strategy- Shift-Right Testing- Shift-Left Testing- Accessibility Testing- Performance Testing- Chaos Engineering & Resilience- Observability- Risk-Based Testing- AI in Testing
**Guest:** Niko Mangahas — Global Practice Lead for Quality Engineering, RCG Global Services  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “If I'm truly being honest, I think the true measure of a good quality strategy is the predictability of outcomes.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #QALeadership #TestStrategy #ShiftRight #ShiftLeft #AccessibilityTesting #PerformanceTesting #ChaosEngineering #Observability #RiskBasedTesting #AITesting #ConfidenceEngineering

An ASG product director on mainframe DevOps, value stream management and where automation and RPA really add value.
Anna Murray of ASG Technologies (recently acquired by Rocket Software) champions 'making legacy legendary', noting 90% of business transactions still run on mainframe yet DevOps tooling and awareness lag there. She frames value stream management as abstracting across complex organisations to find where value is really delivered, and reducing waste through Enterprise Orchestrator. Jonathon raises provocations that DevOps may be too dev-centric versus an 'ops-dev' approach and that one methodology never fits all. The conversation lands on planning as the missing ingredient in failed transformations, product managers as translators between customers and engineers, and RPA's fit for stable legacy systems lacking APIs.
**In this episode:**- DevOps & QAOps- Test Strategy- QA Leadership- Low-Code / No-Code Testing- Communication & Soft Skills- Test Management & Tooling- Agile Testing- Cloud Testing
**Guest:** Anna Murray — Director of Product Management, ASG Technologies  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “We love making legacy legendary.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #DevOps #TestStrategy #QALeadership #LowCode #SoftSkills #TestManagement #AgileTesting #CloudTesting

An Applitools expert on why traditional DOM assertions miss the unknown unknowns that visual AI catches.
Yarden Naveh explains the limits of traditional functional testing based on DOM assertions: you can only test what you thought might break, and passing tests can hide broken user experiences such as CSS colour clashes or overlapping text, the 'unknown unknown'. Applitools Eyes replaces thousands of brittle assertions with a single visual assertion, using AI and machine learning to compare full screenshots as a human eye would, slashing maintenance and improving root cause analysis. The discussion covers accessibility, localization word-wrapping, responsive design and cross-browser rendering via the Ultrafast Grid, which renders one capture across many environments. A hackathon showed Applitools users testing six times faster with 100% issue coverage versus 70%.
**In this episode:**- AI in Testing- Test Automation- Accessibility Testing- Mobile Testing- Cloud Testing- Usability & UX Testing- Regression Testing- Test Metrics & Reporting
**Guest:** Yarden Naveh — Customer Success & Solutions, Applitools  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “The biggest problem that I think exists is what I call the unknown unknown. Tests that are passing, you think that everything is okay, but it actually isn't.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #AITesting #TestAutomation #AccessibilityTesting #MobileTesting #CloudTesting #UXTesting #RegressionTesting #TestMetrics

A QA lead on using risk to force stakeholder alignment, the definition of quality and shifting quality up to leadership.
Recorded as a podcast-and-talk prep session, Iman Benlekehal discusses cultural differences in how risk is talked about between Europe and Canada, and how a risk matrix forces every stakeholder to reveal their differing definition of quality. She argues quality cannot be defined by QA alone: putting opposing stakeholders around one table makes them focus on the same product and agree what is critical. The conversation expands into a quality 'pyramid' placing the customer at the centre of the time-cost-quality triangle, illustrated with autonomous cars, Tesla and GDPR. The second half is Jonathon coaching her on speaking confidence, handling Q&A through misdirection and weaving in others' experience reports.
**In this episode:**- Risk-Based Testing- Quality Culture- QA Leadership- Test Strategy- Communication & Soft Skills- Career Development in QA- Mentoring & Community
**Guest:** Iman Benlekehal — Quality Assurance Lead, CGI  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “If I put them in the same table, they're going to speak to each other and challenge each other... they have a lot of definitions of quality.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #RiskBasedTesting #QualityCulture #QALeadership #TestStrategy #SoftSkills #QACareers #Mentoring

Micro Focus strategy head on the four pillars of digital transformation and evolution over revolution.
Joe Garber explains how Micro Focus defined digital transformation around four core pillars: enterprise DevOps, hybrid IT management, security risk and governance, and predictive analytics. He argues for 'evolution over revolution', bridging existing and emerging systems rather than rip-and-replace, and describes the run-and-transform balance intensified by the pandemic. He discusses leveraging a broad 300-product portfolio through a multiplier effect (Vertica, IDOL, RPA), the importance of culture and avoiding the 84% of failed transformations, and the role of a 6,500-strong partner ecosystem. Big bets include application modernization, next-gen SOC and release velocity.
**In this episode:**- DevOps & QAOps- Cloud Testing- Security Testing- AI in Testing- Test Strategy- QA Leadership- Test Management & Tooling
**Guest:** Joseph Garber — Global Head of Strategy and Solutions, Micro Focus  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “The rip and replace approach to digital transformation at first seems really exciting... but what is critical to remember is there are these core business systems that have IP and processes built around them.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #DevOps #CloudTesting #SecurityTesting #AITesting #TestStrategy #QALeadership #TestManagement

An agile delivery consultant on coaching teams, being value-obsessed and running meaningful retrospectives in distributed teams.
Iwona Winiarska shares her path from a humanities degree into agile and DevOps transformation, and being shortlisted for the Women in Tech Excellence Awards. She contrasts project management with the scrum master role, describing the unlearning required to coach teams into finding their own answers and become 'value obsessed'. She stresses that many organisational problems are cultural rather than technical, and introduces a team health check as a visual, data-driven way to surface pain points to stakeholders. She closes on the challenges of remote working, losing water-cooler moments, and building senior stakeholder buy-in virtually.
**In this episode:**- Agile Testing- QA Leadership- Mentoring & Community- Communication & Soft Skills- Remote & Distributed Teams- Quality Culture- Career Development in QA- DevOps & QAOps
**Guest:** Iwona Winiarska — Agile Delivery Consultant, Automation Logic  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “I'm trying to be value obsessed, if that makes sense.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #AgileTesting #QALeadership #Mentoring #SoftSkills #RemoteTeams #QualityCulture #QACareers #DevOps

Building rock-solid element identifiers and combining them with model-based testing for reusable automation.
Sanjay Kumar, creator of the community-driven SelectorsHub XPath and CSS selector IDE, explains how the tool teaches testers to build robust selectors and handle tricky cases like nested shadow DOM, iframes, and disappearing dropdowns, all born from community feedback. James Walker of Curiosity Software describes the open testing platform and Test Modeler, which visualize what is being tested as flowchart models and let teams normalize automation across mixed tooling. Together they show how good identifiers plus model-based testing lay a strong foundation, enable self-healing by changing a component in a single location, and let organizations auto-assemble models, tests, and test data, illustrated by an education company generating training-pathway tests as part of CI/CD.
**In this episode:**- Test Automation- Model-Based Testing- Test Management & Tooling- Low-Code / No-Code Testing- Codeless Automation- Test Data Management- Mentoring & Community- Test Case Design
**Guest:** Sanjay Kumar — Founder & Creator of SelectorsHub, SelectorsHub  **Guest:** James Walker — Founder / testing leader, Curiosity Software  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “Your automation is only as good as the identifier someone has scripted, so if you start from the beginning with really good identifiers, that is laying the foundation to build good automation later on.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #TestAutomation #ModelBasedTesting #TestManagement #LowCode #CodelessAutomation #TestData #Mentoring #TestDesign

A NASA developer's high-energy take on failing forward, mentoring the next generation, and data's future.
Michael Ritchson shares his journey from aircraft mechanic to NASA software developer and reflects on the culture of innovation, creativity, and failing fast. He and Jonathan Wright discuss instilling curiosity in the next generation, NASA's image and the human cost of space exploration, and how modern architecture leans on containers (Docker, Kafka), redundancy, and resilience. They explore digital twins (inspired by Apollo 13), migrating legacy data into modern systems, applying NLP/AI and VR to historical archives, and the "six degrees of separation" idea that every contributor's small idea can ripple across society. The episode is a warm, motivational conversation about community, mentorship, and the art of the possible.
**In this episode:**- Career Development in QA- Mentoring & Community- Communication & Soft Skills- DevOps & QAOps- AI in Testing- Test Data & Environments- Chaos Engineering & Resilience
**Guest:** Michael Ritchson — Software Developer, NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “It's just like IT industry: when I fail in production, we get back in and then we continue moving forward until we have a successful product.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #QACareers #Mentoring #SoftSkills #DevOps #AITesting #TestEnvironments #ChaosEngineering #DigitalTwinTesting

How low-code, self-healing, AI-driven automation lowers the barrier to entry and helps teams scale testing.
Bertold Kolics of mabl explains the value of "drinking your own champagne" (dogfooding) by testing mabl with mabl to build empathy with end users and catch defects early. He describes how low-code platforms ease the transition from manual to automated testing, reduce maintenance through self-healing, and speed root-cause analysis by capturing rich diagnostics like network logs and screenshots. The conversation covers using usage data and analytics (via a Segment integration) to spend limited "testing dollars" on the most impactful, most-travelled paths, plus tips for scaling automation across enterprise teams by sharing reusable components, pruning dead tests, and involving developers with local test runs.
**In this episode:**- Test Automation- Low-Code / No-Code Testing- Codeless Automation- Continuous Testing- Shift-Right Testing- Shift-Left Testing- AI in Testing- Test Strategy
**Guest:** Bertold Kolics — Engineering team member / self-described "question asker", mabl  **Host:** Jonathon Wright — *The Automation Cyborg*
> “Drinking your own champagne forces you to put your end-user hat on and empathize with your end-users, because you're using the exact same tool that they would.”
🎧 *Subscribe to The QA Lead on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts for conversations on software testing, QA, test automation and the future of quality engineering.*
## Hashtags#SoftwareTesting #QA #QualityEngineering #TheQALead #TestingPodcast #TestAutomation #LowCode #CodelessAutomation #ContinuousTesting #ShiftRight #ShiftLeft #AITesting #TestStrategy