Start Here: The Quality Reimagined Index
Welcome. This is the curated starting point for Quality Engineering leaders modernizing in an AI-accelerated delivery world.
Use this index to navigate the cornerstone essays and the resources that make them actionable.
Recommended starting points
QE Modernization Diagnostic
A one-page scorecard to pinpoint your biggest constraints before chasing the next trend. Reply with your section totals (A–E) and your top constraint, and I’ll send back a few priority moves to consider.
QE Leader Toolkit
A growing library of templates, checklists, and decision frameworks you can apply immediately.
The Cornerstones
The Cornerstones walk you from today’s QA reality (manual work around automation) to a modern Assurance System that produces a Verdict + Evidence Pack at the pace of delivery. If you only read four posts, read these in order.
1) The Shift
The Point of View: Quality Reimagined in the Agentic Era
What you will get: What changed, what didn’t, and why QA becomes an Assurance System when shipping change becomes cheap.
2) Why It Breaks
The Manual Assurance Loop Under Load
What you will get: A candid walkthrough of today’s lifecycle, tools, and factory model, and where manual handoffs collapse as velocity rises.
3) What Good Looks Like
The Automated Assurance Loop
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: The target operating model. A system-run loop with humans on policy and exceptions, and what “good” looks like in practice.
4) How to Get There
The Migration, the People, and the Missing Capabilities
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: A realistic path forward. What you can do now with today’s stack, how partnerships evolve, what roles change, and what capabilities the market still lacks.
The Playbook Modules
The Playbook Modules turn the Cornerstones into execution. Each post solves a different leadership problem: where to apply AI, how to sequence modernization, and how to start small without boiling the ocean. Read these when you want momentum and measurable outcomes.
5) AI That Moves the Needle in QE
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: A filter for AI hype. The few use cases that reduce cycle time, noise, or maintenance, plus what to avoid and how to measure value.
6) The Modernization Ladder
From Manual to Governed Automation
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: A staged view of maturity across people, process, platform, and governance, with clear signals for what to fix next.
7) The Wedge Strategy
Start Small, Scale the Loop
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: How to pick one constrained slice of the loop, prove the pattern, instrument it, and scale safely without a big-bang program.
Trust and Governance
Trust and Governance is about keeping speed while staying defensible. Confidence must survive scrutiny from Security, Risk, incident reviews, and leadership retros. These posts define the metrics, controls, and buying criteria that make the Assurance System credible to the people who can block it.
8) Metrics Leaders Can Defend
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: Decision-grade metrics for confidence, noise, change risk, coverage freshness, and reproducibility. A language leaders can use with engineering and governance stakeholders.
9) Audit-Ready Without Slowdown
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: Evidence captured automatically as the loop runs, with clear exception paths and traceability. Defensible decisions without turning delivery into bureaucracy.
10) How to Buy Platforms
Ignore the UI, Test the Control Plane
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: Demo questions, red flags, and a capability checklist that reveals whether a platform can run the loop: event-in, policy hooks, state/data interfaces, triage outputs, and verifiable artifacts.
Proof
Patterns beat promises.
11) Case Files: What Actually Works
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: Field lessons translated into patterns you can reuse, including what failed, why it failed, and what to copy.
Optional Advanced Series
Forward-looking and deep playbooks. These are clearly labeled when conceptual.
12) Virtual Test Teams
The Next Operating Model
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: A forward-looking model for agentic workflows with human oversight, with clear boundaries on what is proven vs emerging.
13) Debugging Trust
Failure Investigation in Modern Test Stacks
Status: Coming Soon
What you will get: How to reduce noise, diagnose failures faster, and rebuild reliable confidence loops.
How to use this index
If you are new, read The Cornerstones in order.
If you need action now, start with:
AI That Moves the Needle in QE
The Modernization Ladder
Metrics Leaders Can Defend
If you run a TCoE or standards function, start with:
What Good Looks Like
Metrics Leaders Can Defend
How to Buy Platforms
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