Is Testing Like Electricity?
summary
Title proposes testing ≈ electricity and the talk proves it with concrete parallels: historical wins like the IBM System/360 (20,000 installs then 100,000 orders in a month), NASA’s software woes and test practices, and grid fixes like pumped‑storage reservoirs that map to planning, flexibility and contingency in testing. Claims include five tests for the analogy, recommendations to stop automating junk, focus on risk‑based testing, use APIs not fragile GUIs, learn coding and SQL, and try tools such as Cypress or Playwright and emerging AI/ML.
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chapters (24)
- 0:00Conference opening
- 4:15Keynote speaker Phil Royson
- 5:39Testing like electricity intro
- 7:24Angry test manager’s journey
- 10:13Electricity vs software testing
- 11:57Electricity industry birth
- 14:04Industrial revolutions and IT
- 16:14IBM System 360 origins
- 20:50NASA testing challenges
- 21:52Testing passes first comparison
- 22:14Testing enables modern life
- 24:19Why testing can be dangerous
- 27:47Bad testing business risk
- 28:29Digitalization and software
- 30:17DevOps testing bottlenecks
- 31:19Quality risk sensitivity
- 33:47Demand unpredictability
- 39:24Supply meets testing demand
- 40:49Estimating testing effort
- 43:58Soft skills for testing
- 45:21Avoiding global testing crisis
- 47:29Global quality crisis solutions
- 50:17Testing passed all comparisons?
- 51:59Q&A
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