Being a Test Developer Allows Me to Build in Testability
Speaker
Target group
Intermediate (basic understanding of the topic)
Description
Isn't it a major pain when you don't have built-in testability in the product you're testing, and you have to jump through hoops to see what's happening inside? Even worse: you've pushed developers and project leads to build it in, only to watch it slip down the backlog forever.
I want to show you that you don't have to wait. With coding skills and a solid understanding of how your system works, you can build testability directly into the product, in ways your whole team benefits from. I'll share stories from real systems where I've done exactly that: customising the Linux kernel in C to expose internal file system state for testing, and building observability hooks over four years inside a large learning management platform.
And yes, there'll be live coding on stage. In an age where we increasingly hand that work off to AI, watching it written by hand makes a point that a slide deck never quite manages.
This isn't about becoming a developer. It's about knowing enough to not be helpless. And that gap is smaller than most testers think.
You will learn
To identify opportunities for testability improvements in your own system's architecture
To evaluate whether a testability gap is something you can address yourself vs. needs team buy-in
To apply basic code reading skills to understand where hooks and observability points can be added
To build a simple testability enhancement (observability hook or test helper) in a real codebase
To make the case to your team for why tester-built testability benefits everyone