I love to talk.
Here you can find some of my favourite talks from my long speaking career.
If you have booked me to speak at an event and you need a bio and photo, you can find it here.
You can book one of these talks for your event, or request a new talk.
Taming the Beast: Automated Testing for Complex Data Pipelines
Presented at YOW! Data Conference 2019.
When you are faced with a system that processes massive datasets with complex data pipelines involving machine learning, how do you test effectively? When your tests results are less “pass” and “fail”, and more “sort of” and “not really”, how do you automate testing?
Trish Khoo draws upon her experience in testing complex data systems to demonstrate proven strategies for testing in this field. Her experience working on ultra-large-scale systems at Google in Mountain View, California shaped her technical approach to testing which she applies in her work as a consultant today.
Transparency – A holistic approach to software quality
Keynote at Agile Testing Days 2018.
Take your testing career to the next level by shifting your focus to transparency.
The variables that impact software quality go far beyond the variables that are defined in the codebase. Trish Khoo explains how shifting focus from testing to transparency can turn an ordinary tester into a super tester.
Any testing activity is essentially an exercise in increasing transparency within the team.
So if transparency is the true charter of testing, how else can a tester increase transparency of the system under test? Some examples include technical activities such as monitoring, code reviews, and logging.
Video | Slides
Rock Solid Testing without Hiring an Army
Presented at Business of Software Conference, 2016.
You’re already selling ahead of your roadmap and your dev team is getting pretty big. In this talk, Trish Khoo outlines two approaches to keeping pace and quality high without hiring an army, drawing on a decade of software testing at Campaign Monitor, Google and Microsoft.
How to get Developers to Test
Presented at Sydney Quality Engineering Meetup 2018.
“We don’t have enough time to write unit tests!”
“Unit tests just aren’t possible for this kind of system.”
“Developers just aren’t good at testing.”
Do these excuses sound familiar? Would you like to turn your software development team into lean, mean, efficient self-testing machines? Join Trish as she shares her tried-and-true strategies for transforming teams, using coaching, processes and supporting tools.
Scaling Up with Embedded Testing
Keynote for Conference for the Association of Software Testing (CAST), 2014.
Whenever someone asks me what I do for a living, I tell them that my job is to take software from idea to release as efficiently as possible. I provide this service for multiple teams as a time, without writing a single test case. But in my journey to here, it made me question what the role of a tester really is. My conclusion was that testing is not a role – it is an activity. My role therefore is to embed that activity in the software development process, shortening the feedback loop between creation and verification as much as I can. In this talk I will explain what this involves, why it’s awesome and what it means for you as a tester, a software developer, a software engineering manager, and for the budding entrepreneur who’s thinking of building a startup in the next couple of years.
How to Solve Intermittent Issues, aka Random Failures
Presented at Selenium Conference, 2013.
There’s nothing more frustrating than seeing that almost-green test suite ruined by a couple of intermittent issues that are difficult to reproduce. Intermittent issues are not only a maintenance pain – they also lead to low confidence in the test tools themselves. I will go through a few of the more common reasons for these failures, share some mitigation strategies and tell some stories about some intermittent failures that were caused by some surprising issues.
Interviews & Podcasts
Ask Me Anything with Trish Khoo – Ministry of Testing, 2018
QR Podcast with Keith Klein, 2017.
Testcast – podcast series with Bruce McLeod, 2012-2015