Join us for an irreverent exploration of software development's favorite false economy. We'll dive into the seductive world of "ship now, test never" and trace how those passionate early-stage shortcuts transform into toxic long-term relationships with your codebase.

Through battle scars and war stories, you'll discover why "we'll add tests when things calm down" belongs in the same fantasy realm as "I'll start going to the gym next Monday."

Learn practical strategies for integrating testing into your workflow without sacrificing velocity, protecting both your production environment and your team's sanity.

Perfect for engineering teams navigating the delicate balance between speed and sustainability—because nothing kills momentum quite like rebuilding the same features over and over again.

Are tests a chore, or do they help us move faster? Let’s examine what makes testing great and not so great. We’ll focus on test strategies that help us code with confidence and clarity, and where they can cost us time and energy. The secret to good testing lies in how it shapes our developer experience. Do our tests give us useful feedback in a timely manner? How quickly can we tell what is wrong when a test suite fails? Do they document our features and explain our past decisions? We’ll answer these questions with better tests that give us joy.

Writing efficient unit tests is essential for critical software components. But how do we ensure that our tests are thorough enough to cover a huge variety of typical inputs and most edge cases? I'll introduce you to the concept of property-based testing and share how we benefited from using it at Grammarly.

In today's fast-paced software development landscape, the traditional approach of quality assurance (QA) being a last-minute checkpoint is no longer sufficient. Instead, embracing the Shift-left paradigm has become imperative. This talk delves into the concept of Shift-left QA, where QA activities are moved earlier in the software development lifecycle, from the very inception of a project. We will explore how this shift transforms QA from a reactive process focused on bug detection to a proactive approach aimed at preventing defects altogether. Drawing from real-world examples and best practices, we will discuss the benefits, challenges, and strategies for implementing Shift-left QA effectively. Attendees will gain insights into how to foster a culture of quality throughout their organisations, deliver higher-quality software products, and achieve faster time-to-market.