The STARWEST Virtual Attendee Experience

K1

Ryan Lee
Trident Advisors

KEYNOTE | Quality at Machine Speed: The Progressive AI Maturity Model for Testing and QA

Engineering teams now ship code faster than any test organization can verify it. The bottleneck in software delivery has moved — and it's moved to you. Ryan Lee introduces the Progressive AI Maturity Model for Quality Engineering, a five-level framework for closing that gap and reclaiming quality as the control point of AI-native delivery. Ryan walks through each level and what it actually looks like in practice: Level 1 (Foundation, 33%) using AI to draft cases and defects; Level 2 (Literacy, 75%) engineering context from specs, diffs, and production telemetry; Level 3 (Fluency, 300%) embedding AI in automation authoring, maintenance, and risk-based coverage; Level 4 (Agents, 500%) delegating triage, failure clustering, and regression loops to supervised agents; and Level 5 (Agentic, 1000%) operating quality as a continuous system, including evaluation of non-deterministic AI features. Individual contributors leave with a self-assessment rubric and a personal advancement path. Leaders leave with a method for mapping team maturity, sequencing investment, and avoiding the most expensive mistake in AI adoption — deploying autonomy onto a team that cannot yet verify it. Find your level. Take the next one.

K2

Filip Hric
Qodo

KEYNOTE | Tester 2.0—Becoming Indispensable in the Age of AI

Over the past few months, it has become clear that human testing expertise isn't going anywhere. However, surviving the AI era is not the same as thriving in it; simply "not being replaced yet" isn’t the same as being future-ready. With code being produced faster than ever and teams getting leaner, there seems to be a growing gap between code velocity and code quality. Are we just going to have to live with the fact that software quality is in decline? The answer is "no, but..." While some things stay the same, testers of tomorrow need to prepare for the trials ahead. Advocates for quality need to make their voices heard now more than ever, but their strategies and approaches must evolve. In this keynote, Filip will explore the unique strengths that make testers indispensable, while taking a sober look at realities that challenge the profession. He will break down which testing convictions need to be fiercely held, which need to be updated, and which must be abandoned entirely. You can call this model "Tester 2.0," and maybe you'll find out that you're already on a path to becoming a true asset for the industry. Join Filip as he digs into the topics of scaling quality, code governance, and bridging the widening gap between development velocity and product quality. Because as teams ship faster, quality assurance can't afford to be left behind.

W3

Testing AI Systems*

How Testers Can Break AI: Practical Techniques to Find Bias, Hallucinations, and Accessibility

Aditi Jain, Amazon

W5

Test Automation*

Automating the Migration: Scaling Cypress to Playwright Migrations with AI-Driven Velocity

Ryan Song, Iterable

IND1

Industry Insights

AI Wrote the Code. Do You Have Enough Tests to Trust It?

Alfred Querubin, Tricentis

IND2

Industry Insights

Your AI Wrote the Code and the Tests. Who's Actually Checking

Darrel Farris, mabl

IND4

Industry Insights

Stop Grading the AI. Start Teaching It.

Joseph Hurley, Digital.ai

IND5

Industry Insights

Agentic AI in Action: Unifying Your IDE & Testing Toolchain

Eugene Grady, BrowserStack

IND22

Industry Insights

A Roster Is Not an Offense: Quality Orchestration in Agentic Delivery

Speaker TBA, TestGrid

W8

Accessibility Testing*

AI-Assisted Accessibility Testing: Generating WCAG-Focused Checks with Playwright MCP and LLM CLI

Sidhartha Shukla, Amazon

W10

Performance Testing*

From Local to Cloud: Scaling Your Load Tests with AWS (Without Blowing the Budget)

Nestor Valenzuela, Paciolan & Heather Thacker, Gatling

IND8

Industry Insights

Building Trust in AI-Powered Testing: Overcoming Hallucinations and Improving Quality

Eric Beck, Quality Professionals

IND9

Industry Insights

The Enterprise Gap: Why Every Successful Open Source Project Eventually Needs a Platform

Donovan Brady, Leapwork

IND10

Industry Insights

Expanding Coverage with AI: Finding the Balance Between Human-led and Agent-led Testing

Daniel Lagomarsino, SmartBear

W13

AI Governance*

Beyond Coverage: Governing GenAI-Generated Tests with Metrics Leaders Can Trust

Niranjan Maharajh, Johnson & Johnson MedTech

W14

Test-Driven Development*

Test-Driven Thinking in an AI-dominated World

Rob Myers, Agile Institute

IND11

Industry Insights

Leading Cost-Cutting Initiatives by Improving Quality

Vitaly Sharovatov, Qase

K3

Alison Wade
Coveros

KEYNOTE | The Future of Test Automation: Trends, Challenges, and Your Burning Questions - Panel

Test automation is evolving at an unprecedented pace, driven by AI, continuous testing, and the ever-increasing complexity of modern software development. Join us for an engaging panel discussion where industry experts will explore the latest trends in test automation, including AI-powered testing, low-code/no-code automation, and the role of testers in a rapidly changing landscape. This session will also serve as an open forum for attendees to ask any lingering questions from the conference. Whether it’s about the future of automation, best practices, or the impact of AI on testing roles, our panelists are ready to share their insights. Come prepared with your toughest questions and join the conversation on what’s next in software testing!

K4

Kulas Angeles
Sun Life

KEYNOTE | The Quality Engineering Mindset: High-Performance Frameworks for Career and Personal Growth

Success in software testing depends on more than technical know-how—it requires a unique set of skills that can elevate both your work and your personal growth. The mindset, habits, and analytical approach testers develop are powerful assets for thriving in an ever-changing world. The core skills honed as a tester—curiosity, critical thinking, adaptability, and clear communication—are exactly what you need to solve complex problems, make smart decisions, and drive improvement in any domain. Kulas explores how the essential skills of a software tester—like questioning assumptions, focusing on what matters most, and balancing evidence with intuition—equip you for ongoing success. By thinking like a tester, you can approach your career, projects, and personal challenges with a problem-solving mindset that leads to continuous growth and better results. You'll discover how to build practical frameworks for success by defining clear goals, prioritizing your energy where it counts, and knowing when to trust data versus your instincts. By connecting core tester skills with everyday challenges, this session provides practical strategies for making better decisions and staying adaptable in any situation. Improving your life and career isn't always about dramatic change—it's about recognizing that the skills you've built as a tester are the same ones that help you adapt, grow, and succeed everywhere.

T2

Test Leadership*

Quality Made Modern: The 2026 CoE Glow‑Up

Sunita McCoy, Pizza Hut

T3

API Testing*

Testing Event-Driven Systems Without Losing Your Sanity: Practical Patterns for AWS Serverless and Asynchronous Workflows

Parthiban Rajasekaran, CapitalOne

IND14

Industry Insights

The Software Tester's Evolution: AI is the Sidekick, You are the Hero.

Paul Bratlien, UiPath & Nrupaal Mody, Deloitte

IND15

Industry Insights

Testing AI and Testing With AI: Engineering Trust in a Non-Deterministic World

Adam Sandman, Inflectra

T9

Testing AI in Production*

Testing AI Systems That Learn in Production: From Static Test Cases to Continuous Validation

Surya Narayana Reddy Chintacunta, WPP Media & Sowjanya Deva, Code Acuity

T25

Security*

Leveraging AI Assistants to Automate Security Testing and Remediation

Jeffery Payne, Coveros

IND17

Industry Insights

Your AI Agents are Confidently Wrong: Let’s Fix That

Mudit Singh, TestMu AI

IND18

Industry Insights

Agentic AI in Action: Unifying Your IDE & Testing Toolchain

Eugene Grady, BrowserStack

IND20

Industry Insights

Can You Prove Your AI Tests Work? Building Trust Through Governance, Traceability & Evidence

Andrew Melton, OpenText

T13

AI/ML*

Taming the Stochastic Beast: Building AI Evaluation Pipelines for GenAI Releases

Nixalkumar Patel, LG Electronics

T17

AI in Testing*

Agentic Quality at Scale—Orchestrating a QA Swarm for Swift Delivery

Praveen Bagare, EPAM

IND23

Industry Insights

Mission Improbable: Automating a Codebase That Wasn't Built for It

Trent Maynard, Global Shop Solutions

T22

DevOps*

LLM-Powered Observability for Modern Cloud Systems: Telemetry Reasoning, Incident Triage, and Faster Root-Cause Analysis

Prashanthi Matam, Moody's

T24

AI Agents*

Scaling Quality with AI: How We Built Agent-Based QA and a Secure Internal GPT

Anna Petrosyan, Acba Bank

IND26

Industry Insights

Intent-Based Testing: Moving Beyond Static Scripts in the Age of AI

Don Jackson, Perforce

IND28

Industry Insights

AI-Assisted Testing: Using GitHub Copilot and Other Tools to Accelerate QA

Jeffery Payne, Coveros

K5

Chris Loder
Privacy Analytics

KEYNOTE | Cartoon Logic, Real Automation: What We Learned from Saturday Morning Cartoons

Do you remember sitting in front of the TV on Saturday mornings, bowl of cereal in hand, glued to your favorite cartoons? In this interactive session, Chris Loder brings that nostalgia to life, and invites you to help connect the dots between classic cartoon wisdom and modern test automation practices. Through real-time audience participation, live polls, and open discussion, we'll explore how characters like Scooby Doo®, Wile E. Coyote®, and Bugs Bunny® accidentally (or cleverly) taught us principles that apply directly to automation strategy, code reuse, and team collaboration. What can Spiderman®'s animators teach us about efficiency? What could we have done better if we "took that left turn at Albuquerque"? You'll help decide where the conversation goes! Chris shares how these cartoon-inspired insights have helped shape the automation frameworks he's built over his 30-year career, and you'll be encouraged to share your own "cartoon moments" and automation lessons. Come ready to laugh, think, share, and maybe even shout out your favorite cartoon catchphrase. Come for the 'toons, leave with the lessons!