Inside Outside Upside Down:
A Reality-Driven Guide to Test Leadership in a Turbulent Age
About Topic
In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, testers and test leaders face steep learning curves as technologies, tools, and processes evolve and continuously mutate. Companies are reorganizing and dramatically reducing workforces under investor pressure to cut costs and boost profitability, compounding the challenge.
Traditional pressures—tight schedules, limited budgets, inadequate specifications, and last-minute product changes—are now coupled with emerging risks from disruptive technologies. In particular, solutions driven by generative AI are upending established models, where tools and technology stacks that worked just yesterday may seem obsolete by tomorrow.
Drawing on over four decades of experience leading teams through unprecedented challenges, Rob Sabourin introduces an innovative approach to test leadership. He demonstrates how to decouple core testing fundamentals from project-specific attributes by applying multidimensional models—integrating business risk, product lifecycle, and project testing frameworks. This approach empowers teams and individual contributors to leverage existing skills in new environments while efficiently acquiring and refining new ones.
Rob encourages testers to be active context listeners and to act based on the current reality. He challenges them to ask: What has really changed in the product under test? What are users truly doing when they use the product? And what is the actual environment in which the product operates? Testing should be real, recent, and relevant—not confined to maintaining massive, pass/fail–oriented regression test automation frameworks.
For testing projects built on generative AI and similar technologies, traditional pass/fail criteria give way to statistical experiments and regression testing that examine variations against baselines. This paradigm shift highlights the critical need to deliver meaningful, continuous, active feedback to developers and stakeholders.
Delegates will learn practical ways to decouple the project and technological elements of testing from its core fundamentals, thereby paving a clear path for team members to evolve—acquiring the right skills at the right time and reinforcing excellence in applying testing fundamentals efficiently and effectively.
Join Rob for a passionate, high-energy, and transformative session packed with practical insights and actionable strategies. Learn not just to navigate change, but to harness it—empowering your team to thrive amid even the most turbulent environments.
Key Takeaways
1. Innovation creates noise, making obvious truths harder to see.
2. Question if a problem really needs GenAI or if existing tools suffice.
3. Understand GenAI’s true value beyond the hype.
4. Old and new solutions should complement, not replace, each other.
5. A real-world case study shows how GenAI can be used effectively.
6. Clarity comes from cutting through illusions and embracing simplicity.
About Speaker
Rob Sabourin has more than forty-two years of management experience leading teams of software development professionals. A highly respected member of the software engineering community, Rob has managed, trained, mentored, and coached thousands of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization. Rob authored “I am a Bug!”, the popular software testing children’s book; works as an adjunct professor of software engineering at McGill University; and serves as the principal consultant (and president/janitor) of AmiBug.Com, Inc. Contact Rob at [email protected].
Topic details coming soon..
Other Speakers at QonfX 2025
San Francisco
Atomic Talk Title: 7 Highly Valuable Approaches for REST API Testing
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable conte
will be distracted by the readable content.
Ajay Balamurugadas
Exploratory Testing
Functional Testing
San Francisco
Atomic Talk Title: 7 Highly Valuable Approaches for REST API Testing
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable conte
will be distracted by the readable content.
Ajay Balamurugadas
Exploratory Testing
Functional Testing
San Francisco
Atomic Talk Title: 7 Highly Valuable Approaches for REST API Testing
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable conte
will be distracted by the readable content.
Ajay Balamurugadas
Exploratory Testing
Functional Testing
San Francisco
Atomic Talk Title: 7 Highly Valuable Approaches for REST API Testing
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has
It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable conte
will be distracted by the readable content.
Ajay Balamurugadas
Exploratory Testing
Functional Testing