In this interview, Bob Galen, principal agile coach at Vaco Agile, talks about the importance of getting rid of silos by breaking down the barriers of “them and us” and becoming “we.” He also discusses the need for agile managers to steer away from a tactical management view toward a more strategic leadership view. That means leading their teams by setting expectations and guidelines and being available to help if needed, but ultimately just trusting their teams to get the job done.

In this interview, Wendy Siew Wen Chin and Heng Kar Lau, from Intel, discuss their STARWEST presentation, “Marrying Artificial Intelligence with Software Testing: Challenges and Opportunities.” They discuss their experiences with AI, their first STARWEST conference, and some of the differences they have observed between testing practices in Malaysia, their home country, and the United States.

In this interview, Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider Program at Microsoft, speaks about how the initiative allows them to get user feedback before final release. She highlights the importance of getting out in the field to understand your users’ experiences and the difficulties they encounter. Dona also discusses the evolution of the testing role, saying she anticipates that in the near future, testers will have their moment.

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.