Sap For Utilities 2024 Reflections

In this episode, we dive into how artificial intelligence is being developed, tested, and trusted within the UK's National Health Service. Our guest is Adam Byfield, a principal technical assurance specialist with a unique journey from astrophysics to AI assurance. Adam leads a team adapting traditional software testing methods to ensure AI tools in healthcare are safe, effective, and fair,augmenting, not replacing, clinicians. Stay tuned as we unpack the challenges, breakthroughs, and the future of AI in the NHS.

In this episode, Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Pat Rinaldo and Naresh Kumar Nunna to discuss the importance of synthetic test data for organizations that handle large amounts of customer data and cannot use real data due to privacy concerns. Ally Bank, working with Qualitest, has successfully leveraged synthetic data to enable faster innovation and testing for its automotive and insurance applications.  Pat and Naresh discuss ways that they have been able to generate diverse and representative test data to cover a wide range of scenarios, provide significant improvements in test coverage, regression testing speed, and reduction in defects escaping to production, to allow teams to focus on innovation rather than data management and compliance.

For the second part of our Women in Testing podcast  Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi and guests Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Segev to discuss the challenges faced by women leaders, and strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent, including stepping outside of their comfort zones and giving people a chance, microaggressions that women leaders face, and approaches for addressing them, as well as ways to make the first or next move in a dynamic and changing environment.

For this Episode, we welcome guest moderator Gwen Iarussi for an International take on women in testing roles from the front lines to senior management. Gwen hosts Alexis Bell, Sangeetha Gururaj, and Lihi Seghev to discuss their individual paths to success, the importance of sponsorship, mentorship, and advocating for oneself, strategies for overcoming bias and creating opportunities for diverse talent. 

Test Coaching requires understanding team dynamics, building trust, and providing tailored coaching to help testers improve their skills and address perception issues.  Mike Talks joins Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen to discuss ways to assess team strengths, weaknesses, and ways of working. They focus on building rapport and a feedback culture to encourage open communication, as well as avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to providing individualized coaching to best help them succeed.

Qualitest recently participated in the SAP for Utilities conference in Florida and we have several key players who part of the proceedings. Matt Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome Qualitest and Tricentis regulars Rick Lesley, Ryan Williams, Kevin Flynn, and Jeff Fillegar to talk about utilities moving their SAP systems to the cloud, major digital transformation efforts with aggressive deadlines, and the need to ensure quality and minimize disruption to users and providers alike.

CrowdStrike showed the world that problems can be found in unexpected places and can manifest in ways never intended with devastating results. While there is much pontificating about the root cause and how it happened, the point is "it happened". The popular joke of "Maybe they should have tested more" will invariably be said but what specifically does that mean?  Testing Show hosts Matthew Heusser and Michael Larsen welcome 1-800-CONTACTS Software Test Engineer Rachel Kibler and Qualitest CTO Vikul Gupta to discuss the various findings and speculations related to the Crowdstrike issue. We then delve into ways that testers can learn from and be better prepared for situations like this going forward, as well as leveraging next-generation technology like Generative AI to assist in the process.

CI/CD is a topic that comes up a lot and many organizations profess to doing it. Are they really doing it effectively? That was the question we had in mind and to that end, Nikolay Advolodkin, staff developer advocate at Sauce Labs, joined us to talk about implementing automated software testing and improving testing practices, specifically around the CI/CD processes. 

SAP testing has its own world in the testing ecosphere. It's a huge component (or set of components) and yet there may be many who know little about it and those who are familiar may only be scratching the surface with what is happening. Daniel Do Valle, Bill Hayden, and Kenneth Small join Matt and Michael to discuss all things SAP, including AI, the future of tooling, and how to get the most out of testing SAP implementations.  

In this episode of The Testing Show, Matt and Michael welcome Alisha Mittal, Vice President at the Everest Group, and Vikul Gupta, CTO for Qualitest North America, about the role of generative AI in testing. We look at the current state of the market and the challenges enterprises face in adopting generative AI, and how generative AI can enhance testing efforts and improve test collateral creation.