Field notes

Point of view.

Writing on QA, quality engineering, and the uncomfortable truths about how software teams actually work. No vendor pitches. No framework evangelism. Pattern recognition from the inside.

QA Practice

The best tester I ever worked with would have flunked your automation interview

The best tester I ever worked with would have flunked your automation interview.

June 2026 · 3 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
The value was always The Knowledge.
the judgement for where the bodies are buried takes years — no selenium test reveals it.
AI in Testing

Risk-based testing without the dead spreadsheet

"Where's your risk-based test plan?"

June 2026 · 3 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
You're now testing the spreadsheet.
when the risk register becomes the deliverable, the actual testing stops mattering.
Test Strategy

Flaky tests are a design problem, not a tooling problem

"Our tests are flaky. We're shopping for a better test runner."

June 2026 · 3 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
You're looking at a mirror.
flakiness is non-determinism you built in, not a problem the test runner can solve.
Test Strategy

Coverage targets are Goodhart's Law in a hi-vis jacket

"We've mandated 80% coverage across every repo."

June 2026 · 3 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
where the bugs live.
the gap between your coverage number and actual quality is where every escaped defect hides.
Quality Engineering

The best bug triage has fewer bugs, not faster triage

The best bug triage meeting I've ever sat in was over in four minutes.

June 2026 · 3 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
Still a wet floor.
faster triage is a bigger mop. it doesn't fix where the water is coming from.
Test Strategy

The problem with your 87% coverage score

Coverage metrics measure activity, not confidence. High-coverage test suites routinely mask quality gaps — and AI code generation is making the problem harder to see and easier to ignore.

May 2026 · 8 min read · Stuart Coulson
Read article →
87%
Coverage score that made the team confident enough to skip the pre-release smoke test.
CI / CD

Your CI pipeline is green. Your system isn't.

Environment failures account for the majority of CI flakiness, and your team has learned to treat test failures as noise. That is the most dangerous outcome a QA function can produce.

Coming soon
Quality Engineering

QA gets cut first because it measures itself in the wrong currency

Every QA team that gets downsized in the next 18 months will share one trait: they reported test coverage instead of business outcomes. Those are not the same thing, and executives have noticed.

Coming soon
AI in Testing

AI won't fix your test strategy. It will accelerate the mess.

AI-assisted testing is a force multiplier. If your underlying strategy is sound, you will move faster. If it isn't, you will accumulate technical debt at a rate that was previously not possible.

Coming soon
Stay in the loop

Get new insights in your inbox.

No fixed cadence — published when there's something worth saying. Unsubscribe anytime.

About this writing

Practitioner register.
No hedging.

These pieces are written for people who have been in client war rooms, debugged flaky pipelines at 11pm, and argued with a CTO about what "done" means. The goal is a sharper framing of problems you already half-know, or language for something you have not been able to articulate yet.

01

Opinionated

Every piece takes a position and holds it. The goal is a claim specific enough that someone could disagree with it — not a summary of what everyone already thinks.

02

Grounded

Abstract advice without an example is noise. Every argument is anchored in a pattern, a client archetype, or a specific failure mode seen in the field.

03

Sceptical of hype

Vendor claims, framework evangelism, and buzzword-heavy thought leadership are fair targets. Nothing here is endorsed without direct experience.

04

Timely

Each piece is tied to something happening now — a tool shift, a hiring pattern, a debate circulating among engineering leaders. Not evergreen content in disguise.

Free discovery call

Need a senior QA perspective on your team?

Book a free 30-minute call. No sales pressure — just an honest conversation about where your quality programme stands.