Quality Assurance for Startups and Small Organisations
QA is frequently ignored until it is too late. Then when the product is released there is a scramble to make updates and release items without proper testing. Putting in QA earlier resolves these problems.
April 23, 2026 12:00 p.m. Eastern (Toronto) Time Virtual: Zoom
When: Tuesday January 27, 2026 6:15 p.m. (until 7:30 p.m.) EST
Cost: $20.00 (CAD) Register at https://tassq.org/events.
Presentation Abstract: HOW A COACH CAN TRANSFORM YOUR IT CAREER In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, technical skills alone won’t get you to the top. Whether you’re a developer, engineer, analyst, or aspiring leader, the key to thriving in your IT career lies in mastering the human side of success—clarity, confidence, and strategic growth. This webinar dives into how professional coaching can accelerate your career trajectory, helping you navigate challenges, build influence, and align your work with your deeper purpose. Join us to discover how coaching empowers IT professionals to break through plateaus, lead with impact, and future-proof their careers in an industry that never stops evolving. If you’re ready to move from reactive problem-solver to intentional change-maker, this session is your launchpad.
National Software Testing and Quality Engineering Conference
This conference is specifically designed for experts in software testing, quality assurance, and quality engineering, and it aims to provide a thrilling new gathering tailored to their needs.
The field is currently experiencing a revolution with the introduction of AI, making this an ideal moment for professionals to take charge and stay ahead of the curve.
By attending this one-day event in May, participants will have the opportunity to network with industry pioneers who are shaping the future, as well as leverage the power of AI through interactive workshops.
In late 2025 NVP ran a webinar about the impacts of AI on a Test Lead/Manager. We discussed both the changes by using AI in testing (test preparation, execution and reporting) and testing an AI infused system (non-deterministic output). Recently we had a discussion with someone tasked with the latter problem and his solution to most of the problem. Clearly there was more work to be done. With the field of AI moving very quickly, some of what we said several months ago needs to be updated. A new instance of this webinar will be run in March 2026. Stay tuned for dates, times and registration details.
When: Tuesday January 27, 2026 6:15 p.m. (until 7:30 p.m.) EST
Cost: $20.00 (CAD) Register at https://tassq.org/events.
Presentation Abstract: HOW A COACH CAN TRANSFORM YOUR IT CAREER In today’s fast-paced tech landscape, technical skills alone won’t get you to the top. Whether you’re a developer, engineer, analyst, or aspiring leader, the key to thriving in your IT career lies in mastering the human side of success—clarity, confidence, and strategic growth. This webinar dives into how professional coaching can accelerate your career trajectory, helping you navigate challenges, build influence, and align your work with your deeper purpose. Join us to discover how coaching empowers IT professionals to break through plateaus, lead with impact, and future-proof their careers in an industry that never stops evolving. If you’re ready to move from reactive problem-solver to intentional change-maker, this session is your launchpad.
This quote is interesting and would probably be disputed by many people. They would say that a Vision is something you want to do and whether or not it can be executed has no impact on its validity (or whether it is a hallucination). While the quote is not new, the applicability to today’s world with the concerns expressed about AI Hallucinations provides it with a fresh applicability.
Over the years we have encountered a lot of Visions for Software Testing and Quality Assurance. Unfortunately, many of them do not get realised. Budget is often stated as the main culprit despite the fact that almost all Visions relate to doing tasks better and cheaper. Quality Assurance Visions are even worse. Saying that we want to make Process Improvements without some concrete actions to back it up (not part of the Vision directly but certainly related) does not go very far. But with no Vision at all, no improvement will ever occur and the same processes and same errors will recur for every project or initiative.
Make 2026 the time you realise your Visions for Software Testing and Quality Assurance.
Software Testing solves your problems for today and yesterday. Quality Assurance makes your Vision reality.
“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” The above quote is attributed to various people. We want to apply it to Software Quality Assurance.
Quality Assurance is one of the areas where people (not in QA) feel that resources or funding are wasted since they see no immediate benefit. Avoiding the process improvement and incremental changes are simply piling up technical and resource debt for the future. Bad processes do not fix themselves and usually get worse over time. The cumulative debt increases until it is unmanageable.
Every problem avoided is one less to fix. When creating or improving processes and applying them to any particular situation, it is necessary to measure the improvement by taking a baseline and checking for improvement or degradation. The effort invested in measurement will pay back with further improvements.
Software Testing solves problems for yesterday and today.
Quality Assurance solves your problems coming tomorrow!
One of the problems QA has is deciding how much proof is enough.
Proofs are expensive and time consuming to generate. Even with new tools saving everything in video and screen shots, there is still a need to confirm that the correct items appear, and they can be found later. This is particularly true in Projects with regulatory requirements. AI can certainly help with this and reduce a lot of the manual work. But we still need to set guidelines about how long, and where the proofs are kept. They must also be secured from unauthorized access and manipulation. Any mistrusted proof will cause issues at audit time. Lastly, they must be able to be found when required.
Proofs are also helpful when we come to testing the new version of the software. Detailed actual results can not only pinpoint unexpected and detrimental changes in the new version but they can also guide other testing that may need to be done.
Two questions arise:
1. Are proofs necessary – Yes.
2. How long should they be kept – that depends on the industry and requirements but (as should be the case for all documentation) a policy for document retention needs to be written, filed, and applied.
Either way we do not keep everything for ever.
Proofs are a crucial part of software testing and will be called upon in the future as software testing faces scrutiny in how they tested in the event of problems in production.
