Technologist and evangelist Peter Varhol and Gerie Owens, a test architect and certified ScrumMaster, discuss their STARWEST presentation, “What Aircrews Can Teach Testers about Testing.” They talk about how testers can apply airline safety practices to their teams’ delivery of high-quality applications through complementary expertise, collaboration, and decision-making. They also explain how blind deference to authority and automation can be detrimental to a testing team, and how to use everyone’s skills to achieve success.

In this interview, Wilson Mar, principal DevOps performance evangelist at JetBloom, describes the importance of Git to testing and to securing employment in the field. Because Git is a great way for testers to display their work, many interviewers look at an applicant’s public GitHub account as a means of judging their work. Wilson discusses his STARWEST session on Git and resources he provides on his GitHub account about Git basics.

Julie Gardiner, head of QA at Testing Rainmaker Limited, discusses the STAR conferences Test Lab she leads, which allows people to attend virtually and even win prizes for best test report and best bug report. She also talks about her upcoming book, and why emotional awareness, self-management, empathy, and relationship building are important skills for testers.

Chris Loder, automation architect at InGenius, talks about being a self-taught automation developer, why learning new skills is so important, and the synergy between manual testers, automation testers, and developers.