Month: June 2025

There are a thousand definitions of leadership floating around in the tech world.

Some are about vision. Some about influence. Some about decision-making.

But lately, I’ve been thinking about leadership in simpler—and maybe more human—terms:

Leadership is the ability to capture, hold, and responsibly steward the attention of other people.

That’s it. Attention.

In a world where people are exhausted, distracted, multitasking, and context-switching into oblivion, the rarest commodity is not money, not talent, not tools.

It’s focused, sustained, purposeful attention.

And if you can gather it, hold it, and guide it toward what matters—then you’re leading.

Why Attention Matters in Quality Work

When you work in testing or quality engineering, you’re constantly trying to direct attention:

Toward a weird edge case you just found. Toward a known gap in automation that everyone keeps working around. Toward the end user, who won’t care how elegant the code is if the “reset password” link doesn’t work.

But calling attention to something doesn’t guarantee action.

You have to earn attention.

And once you have it, you have to steward it carefully.

That means:

Not crying wolf. Speaking with clarity, not clutter. Choosing the right moment and medium. Knowing when to press and when to let go.

Because in a healthy team, leadership isn’t just about making decisions. It’s about helping people notice what they’ve been trained to overlook.

Capturing Attention ≠ Demanding It

Some leaders try to capture attention through pressure or fear or volume.

But servant leadership offers another model—one rooted in trust, empathy, and relevance.

If people trust that when you speak, it matters, they’ll lean in.

If they’ve seen that you protect their focus, they’ll give it more freely.

If they feel that your attention is on them—not just your own agenda—they’ll respond with loyalty, not compliance.

That’s what stewardship looks like.

It’s not grabbing attention for your own sake.

It’s curating it for the sake of the team’s well-being and the product’s integrity.

What This Looks Like in Practice

In a standup, it might mean skipping your usual update to draw attention to a creeping risk in the integration layer. In a retrospective, it might mean gently steering the team away from blaming bugs and toward improving test strategy. In a design review, it might mean naming the accessibility edge case no one has brought up yet—not to win points, but to protect users. In a quiet moment, it might mean noticing who’s overwhelmed and redirecting team energy to give them room to breathe.

In every case, the question is:

What are we paying attention to?

And is it the right thing?

Holding Attention is Sacred Work

It’s one thing to get attention.

It’s another thing entirely to hold it—and to hold it well.

Greenleaf, in his writings on servant leadership, talked about the burden of awareness. Once you see something, you’re responsible for it. And once others see it—because you pointed it out—you carry some responsibility for what happens next.

That’s a weighty kind of leadership.

But it’s also a deeply humane one.

Especially in testing, where pointing to a bug, or a gap, or a systems-level fragility can change the course of a project—or protect a user from harm.

The Kind of Leader I Want to Be

I don’t want to lead because I have authority.

I want to lead because I help people pay attention to what really matters.

To slow down when we’re rushing.

To look again when something doesn’t feel right.

To raise our standard—not because we’re trying to be perfect, but because someone’s trust is on the other side of this release.

If I can help shape that kind of focus, if I can be that kind of steward of attention—then maybe I’m leading well.

Even without a title.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.

There’s a four-letter word that drives me up the wall in corporate life.

We. (Okay, it’s only two letters, but you get it.)

Not in the team spirit way. Not in the collaborative culture way. I’m talking about the passive-aggressive, responsibility-blurring, clarity-erasing kind of “we”:

“We need to make sure this gets done.”

“We should probably rethink that approach.”

“We can’t do it like this.”

Sound familiar?

What’s usually meant is:

“You need to do this.”

Or: “I don’t agree, but I’m not going to say so directly.”

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The Corporate “We” Is Often a Disguise

Sometimes “we” is used to assign work without owning the ask:

• “We should follow up with the client” → You should follow up with the client.
• “We need better test coverage here” → You need to write more tests.

Other times, “we” is used to deflect disagreement:

• “We don’t do it that way” → I don’t want to do it that way.
• “We shouldn’t go live with this” → I don’t believe this is good enough, but I’m not ready to stand behind that belief on my own.

Instead of saying, “Here’s the standard of excellence I’m holding us to,” we fall back on vague, corporate-sounding consensus.

But let’s be honest: “we” can’t carry a decision that nobody is willing to own.

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Why It Matters

Language shapes culture. And culture shapes trust.

When leaders or teammates hide behind “we,” it does a few damaging things:

• It avoids ownership. No one’s really responsible for the opinion or the task.
• It erodes clarity. Who is actually expected to do what?
• It discourages direct dialogue. If I disagree, who am I disagreeing with—you, or the mysterious collective we?
• It creates performative alignment. Everyone nods, nobody speaks plainly, and the best ideas or concerns go unspoken.

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What to Say Instead

Let’s make this practical. Here’s what better communication looks like:

If you mean…	Say this instead of “we”
I want you to do this	“Hey, can you take this on?”
I disagree with this approach	“Here’s why I don’t think this meets our standards.”
I think we need to act together	“Let’s tackle this as a team—I’ll do X if you can do Y.”
I think we should hold off	“I’m not comfortable shipping this yet because…”

See the difference? It’s not confrontational—it’s clear.

It invites honesty. It invites trust.

And it gives people something solid to respond to, rather than guessing at what’s being asked or implied.

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Servant Leadership Means Speaking Plainly

I’ve written before about servant leadership. One of the key practices of a servant-leader is foresight—naming what others might avoid, so the team can act with integrity.

Sometimes that means advocating for quality.

Sometimes that means owning responsibility.

Sometimes that means saying, “I see a risk here,” even if no one else has said it yet.

But it almost always means dropping the vague language and saying what you mean.

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The Bottom Line

If you’re in a position of leadership—or even informal influence—your words carry weight. Use them carefully.

Don’t say “we” when you mean “you.”

Don’t say “we can’t” when you mean “I’m not on board.”

And don’t rely on passive grammar to do the hard work of honest communication.

Your team deserves more than subtext.

So say the thing. Kindly. Clearly. Directly.

That’s real leadership.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.

There’s a question that haunts every software release—no matter how agile, mature, or automated your pipeline is:

“Is this ready for production?”

It sounds simple. But it’s not.

Behind that question lives a web of complexity:

Did we test it thoroughly enough? Did we test the right things? What’s the blast radius if something breaks? Is there anything we didn’t think to check? Is the team ready to respond if it goes sideways?

And then, the most human layer:

Do I trust the person answering?

The Risk Behind the Release

Shipping software is always a risk calculus.

You’re trading the known value of holding off against the potential value of going live—and all the unknowns that come with it.

That’s why the question “Is it ready?” isn’t just technical. It’s relational. It’s about confidence. And more than that—it’s about trust.

In every organization, there need to be people who can answer that question with integrity, clarity, and calm.

Not hype. Not fear. Not political spin.

Just the truth.

What It Takes to Say “Yes” (or “Not Yet”)

The ability to answer “Is it ready?” confidently depends on a few things:

Contextual knowledge – You know how the system behaves, where it’s fragile, and what’s most important to users. Historical memory – You’ve seen similar changes go wrong before, and you’ve learned what to check. Testing strategy – You didn’t just automate a happy path—you explored, poked, questioned, and validated across dimensions. System thinking – You understand how this piece interacts with everything around it. Honesty under pressure – You’re willing to say “not yet” when everyone wants to hear “yes.”

That last one is rare. And critical.

The Trusted Voice

In every team I’ve worked with, there’s usually one person everyone turns to when things are dicey:

“Hey, what do you think—is this good to go?”

Sometimes that person is a tester. Sometimes it’s a tech lead. Sometimes it’s a product owner with deep user empathy.

What matters most is not their title—but their judgment.

And the trust others place in their judgment.

That trust isn’t built overnight. It’s built:

By noticing the little things before they become big. By being right when it matters most—but also owning when you’re wrong. By speaking plainly. By keeping user experience, risk, and business value in view—not just test coverage metrics.

It’s built when people say, “If they say it’s ready, I believe it. And if they say we should wait, I’m listening.”

That person is gold.

Your team needs them.

Your release process needs them.

And if you’re that person? Don’t underestimate your role.

Stop Waiting for Certainty

Here’s the hard truth: software is never perfectly ready.

There will always be something we missed.

Some environment mismatch.

Some obscure browser quirk.

Some misaligned mental model between user and interface.

But that’s why we don’t need perfect knowledge—we need clear-eyed wisdom.

We need someone who’s willing to say:

“We’ve tested what matters.

We understand the risk.

We have a rollback plan.

Let’s ship it.”

Or:

“This still smells off.

Let’s give it one more day.”

Build the Culture That Listens

If you want better answers to the “Is it ready?” question, you need more than dashboards.

You need:

A culture where concerns are welcomed, not punished. Time to think and test deeply. Space to say “not yet” without fear. Leaders who don’t equate confidence with bravado.

Because at the end of the day, confidence isn’t about sounding sure.

It’s about having done the work.

And building the trust to be heard when it counts.

So next time you’re about to push to production, ask the question.

And ask it to someone you trust.

Someone who doesn’t just tell you what you want to hear—but what you need to hear.

That person might save your launch.

They might even save your job.

And if you’re lucky enough to be that person?

Keep doing the quiet, quality work.

It matters more than you know.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.

Five months ago, I started building a mobile end-to-end native automation framework at Jump. It sounded ambitious. It was ambitious. And if I’m honest, the first real resistance I encountered wasn’t from the codebase—or even my teammates—but from myself.

“Can I really do this?”

“Is it even possible to test this stuff cleanly?”

“What if this breaks everything and I have to fake my own disappearance?”

These were just a few of the many encouraging thoughts that accompanied me in the early days.

Quality at Speed (Isn’t Just a Buzzphrase)

But here’s what I’ve learned: building with quality and speed isn’t just a nice-sounding ideal. It’s possible—and it’s crucial—if you design for it. I’ve come to understand that quality isn’t a gate at the end. It’s something you bake in from the beginning, quietly, deliberately, and persistently.

The framework I’ve been building isn’t flashy. It doesn’t shout. It just runs—I mean, it runs right now, and fingers crossed, tomorrow too. And it gives us the kind of confidence that lets you ship without breaking into a cold sweat.

Working with People (and the Occasional Bad Attitude)

This project has also taught me how to navigate working with folks who have very different priorities—or, let’s be real, different moods. Some days I was the team optimist, and other days I was discussing test reliability with someone who thought QA was short for “Quick Annoyance.”

But the truth is, every team has its tensions. What matters is whether you can move through them and still make progress. I’ve learned to advocate for quality without derailing momentum, to keep things lightweight without being sloppy, and to invest in relationships while still delivering results.

Contributing Beyond the Code

What surprised me most was how much this kind of work influences team culture. Good tests don’t just find bugs—they build trust. They create space for faster experimentation, cleaner code, and less hand-wringing before a release. And when people start to believe in the system you’ve built, they start to believe in the process too.

This framework hasn’t just helped us catch issues earlier. It’s helped engineers feel more confident, product managers sleep better, and it’s added a layer of stability that supports the whole team.

TL;DR

• A mobile end-to-end native test framework was designed and implemented from scratch
• Quality and speed were prioritized together—baked into the development process, not bolted on
• The framework now supports confident, low-stress releases
• It was built in a collaborative environment with real-world constraints, shifting priorities, and occasional resistance
• Along the way, it helped shape a stronger engineering culture grounded in trust, clarity, and care

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There’s a line in Robert Greenleaf’s writing that’s always stuck with me:

“The servant-leader is servant first. It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.”

I’ve read that sentence dozens of times, in different seasons of life—first as a pastor, and now as a software tester—and I’ve come to believe it applies just as much to quality engineering as it does to ministry, education, or public service.

Quality work, at its core, is servant work.

It is quiet, often invisible. It rarely comes with a parade. And yet it plays a crucial role in the health of the whole.

So what happens when we view testing not simply as a technical function, but as an act of servant leadership?

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What Is Servant Leadership, Really?

Greenleaf didn’t invent the idea of service, but he framed it with striking clarity in his 1970 essay, The Servant as Leader. He proposed a kind of leadership that prioritizes listening over commanding, empathy over ego, and the growth of others over personal ambition.

He asked a deceptively simple question:

“Do those served grow as persons?”

And then the clincher:

“While being served, do they become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”

That question has haunted and inspired me for years. And when I think about the craft of testing—the daily decisions, the posture, the purpose—I can’t help but see a deep resonance.

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Testing as Servant Leadership

A good tester doesn’t just look for bugs. A good tester listens. Watches. Asks better questions. Illuminates risk not to say “gotcha”, but to say “let’s protect what matters most.”

The best testers I know:

• Help developers see the edges of their own assumptions.
• Speak on behalf of the user, even when it’s inconvenient.
• Shield the team from preventable harm.
• Create clarity in the fog of complexity.
• Make others better at their work by deepening awareness and care.

If that’s not servant leadership, I don’t know what is.

But here’s the catch: servant leadership doesn’t always look like leadership. It doesn’t fit neatly in a Jira ticket or a sprint demo. It’s often relational, quiet, and deeply embedded in team dynamics.

That’s why it’s so easy for servant-testers to feel invisible—or worse, underappreciated.

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The Temptation to Perform vs. the Call to Serve

In fast-paced tech environments, there’s always pressure to produce—test cases, metrics, automation frameworks, coverage reports. And all of those have their place. But servant leadership reminds us that the goal isn’t performance—it’s transformation.

Greenleaf wrote:

“The servant-leader is seen as leader because of the care taken to ensure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served.”

That changes the job description. It shifts the focus from output to outcome, from checklist to care.

When I do exploratory testing, I’m not just looking for failures. I’m looking for signals—of confusion, of brittleness, of friction in the user experience. I’m trying to serve not just the product, but the people who will use it.

And when I write automation, I’m not writing scripts to look impressive. I’m writing them so a future teammate can sleep easier knowing regression is covered.

That’s servant work. And it’s quality work in the deepest sense of the word.

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The Challenge of Invisible Impact

Greenleaf acknowledged that servant leaders may go unrecognized:

“The work of the servant-leader is often carried out quietly, in subtle ways that are not easily measured or tracked.”

Sound familiar?

In many teams, testers are the last ones mentioned when a launch goes well—but the first ones questioned when something breaks. And if you’re a tester who leads through presence, not power—who builds influence through listening and noticing—it can feel like no one sees the value you bring.

But here’s what I’ve learned: servant leadership doesn’t require a spotlight. It requires a compass.

It requires a commitment to who you are becoming in the work, and what you are helping others become.

Are your teammates growing more thoughtful? More aware? More confident in the systems they’re building?

Are your users more free, more empowered, more protected?

Then you’re doing the work.

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A Quiet Invitation

I think the testing community—and the tech world more broadly—needs a revival of servant leadership. Not performative humility. Not martyrdom. But the real, rooted kind of leadership that Greenleaf describes: grounded in listening, trust-building, systems-thinking, and a deep desire to elevate others.

It starts by asking:

• Who am I serving, really?
• What does quality look like for them?
• How do I lead in a way that helps them become better, freer, more thoughtful contributors to this ecosystem?

It’s not flashy work. But it’s faithful work.

And in a world obsessed with speed and scale, servant leadership might just be the most radical kind of quality we can offer.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.

Starting over isn’t as romantic as it sounds.

I don’t mean switching careers—that story’s already been told. I mean walking into a new team, a new tech stack, a new strategy, and realizing that most of what gave you confidence before doesn’t quite apply here.

That’s where I am right now.

I joined a new company recently—smart people, high standards, exciting mission. But almost everything about how testing is done here is different from where I came from. The frameworks are different. The tech stack is different. The strategy is less centralized. There’s no QA team. Everybody owns testing—which sometimes means nobody owns testing. And I’ve moved a few rungs down the chain of command, which means I’m not defining the process anymore. I’m trying to learn the process—fast.

To be clear: I’m learning a ton. About Kotlin Multiplatform, native mobile test frameworks, CI integrations, API integration testing, etc. About how startups evolve under pressure. About how to be useful even when I’m unsure.

But it’s also disorienting. And humbling. And, some days, a little bruising.

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The Myth of the Clean Transition

I used to think moving to a new job meant transferring your skills and building on top of them like a stack of blocks. But the truth is, some transitions feel more like being disassembled. Like you showed up with a full toolbelt, only to find out most of your tools don’t fit the bolts anymore.

That’s not failure. It’s friction. And friction is what learning feels like in real time.

What’s hard is when that friction compounds:

• You start second-guessing decisions.
• You wonder if people think you’re behind.
• You spend time googling things you used to teach others.
• You do good work but it gets lost in the churn.
• You feel pressure to “prove” your value again, but you’re not sure how.

And quietly, that voice creeps in: Maybe I’m not cut out for this.

But here’s what I’ve learned from past transitions (and from therapy, and late-night journaling, and a few long walks):

Growth doesn’t always feel like growth. Sometimes it feels like failure until enough time has passed to see it differently.

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Testing Without a Safety Net

Coming from a place where I had a whole QA team, it’s been an adjustment to work in a context where quality is “everyone’s job.” In theory, I love that. It’s collaborative. Empowering. Holistic.

But in practice?

Some things fall through the cracks.

Some bugs don’t get caught.

Some test coverage gets deprioritized.

I’ve had to recalibrate what it means to advocate for quality without sounding like a bottleneck—or a broken record.

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What I’m Trying to Remember

A few things I keep telling myself (and maybe you need to hear them too):

• Your value isn’t tied to mastery. You’re allowed to not know. You’re allowed to ask.
• New teams mean new cultures. Not better or worse—just different. Watch, learn, and try to find where your voice adds something meaningful.
• You can lead from wherever you are. Even if you’re not defining the test strategy, your perspective still matters. Your habits still influence the team.
• You’ve done hard things before. This isn’t the first time you’ve felt lost. It won’t be the last. But you’ve always found your footing eventually.

Also: rest matters. Some of the confusion and burnout you’re feeling might not be about the job at all—it might just be about running on empty. So refill.

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Starting Small

Here’s what I’ve been doing to stay grounded:

• Drawing messy mind maps and punch lists on my whiteboard.
• Keeping a scratchpad of “weird behaviors” I’ve seen, even if I don’t fully understand them yet.
• Writing down what I do know, so I can look back and see the learning curve.
• Taking five minutes each day to reflect: What did I learn today that I didn’t know yesterday?

Sometimes the only way forward is through the fog. But even when it’s slow, you’re still moving.

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To anyone else starting over right now: I see you.

You’re not failing—you’re unfolding.

Keep learning. Keep drawing connections. Keep asking better questions.

Even when it doesn’t feel like it, you’re getting stronger.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.

One of the first lessons Mike Goempel taught me when I started my unexpected journey into software testing was this: Don’t just write test cases—map your mind.

Mike handed me a dry-erase marker and pulled me over to a whiteboard. “Start here,” he said, “with what you know. Then just follow the edges.”

At first, I thought this was just a quirky brainstorming exercise. But it turned out to be one of the most powerful strategies I would carry with me into client meetings, exploratory sessions, and even interviews. Mind mapping—literally drawing the web of components, inputs, flows, failure points, and user interactions—turned out to be the best way I knew to see the system.

It made things visible before they became problems.

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The TestInsane Treasure Chest

Later, I discovered TestInsane’s Software Testing Mind Maps, which blew the concept wide open. Dozens of detailed maps on everything from login pages to browser compatibility to REST API testing. These weren’t just diagrams—they were distilled tester wisdom.

In moments when I felt stuck, those maps helped me ask better questions:

• What kind of data should I try here?
• What happens if the network flakes out?
• What roles haven’t I considered?
• What mental model is the user bringing to this feature?

Mind maps trained me to think like a tester—not just a checker.

And they reminded me that the real job isn’t to cover every edge case; it’s to explore the edges of what we understand about the system.

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But What About AI?

Now we’re in a different moment.

There are tools that can generate hundreds of test cases from a user story. Tools that analyze your logs, learn your app flows, and even recommend tests based on statistical models. It’s easy to wonder: Do I still need to draw messy webs on a whiteboard?

My answer is yes. Maybe more than ever.

AI is good at surfacing patterns. It’s good at generating plausible test paths. But mind maps aren’t about plausibility. They’re about curiosity. They’re about turning a vague idea into a network of possibilities and risks, and noticing the areas where no arrows exist yet.

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Mind Maps + Language Models: A Creative Duo

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

Let’s say I’m testing a new referral workflow in a healthcare app. I’ll pull out my iPad or a whiteboard and start a mind map with the central node: “Referral Flow”. From there I branch into:

• User roles
• Input sources
• Data dependencies
• Third-party integrations
• Notifications
• Audit trail

Now I’ve got a messy but meaningful diagram. That’s when I invite the AI in.

I might ask ChatGPT:

“Given this referral flow with X, Y, and Z components, what are some edge cases or risky transitions I should explore?”

Or:

“Can you generate test cases for the nodes I’ve outlined here?”

Even better, I can copy-paste parts of the mind map into a prompt:

“For a workflow involving user-submitted referrals, a scheduling engine, and notification logic, what are 10 test ideas involving failure states or degraded network conditions?”

What the model gives me back isn’t a replacement for the map—it’s an enhancer. A second brain to bounce against. A pattern-spotter. A list-maker. But it’s my messy mind map that gives it direction.

Without the map, AI becomes reactive—answering the wrong question really well.

With the map, AI becomes collaborative—adding depth to the shape I’m already sketching.

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Mapping What Matters

These days, my maps are less polished. Sometimes they’re scribbled in GoodNotes or sketched on a Post-It. Sometimes they never leave my head. But the discipline remains: Think in branches, not in lists.

If you’re new to testing—or if AI tools are starting to make you question your instincts—I’d encourage you to try this:

Take a feature. Draw a circle. Then let your questions grow like vines. Don’t worry about making it look pretty. Just get the system out of your head and onto a page. You’ll be surprised what you see.

And if you need inspiration, the TestInsane repo is still a goldmine.

Thanks, Mike, for handing me that marker. And thanks to every messy tester who ever dared to draw what didn’t fit neatly into a table.

We may be in the age of automation, but some of our best tools are still hand-drawn.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.