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How modernising our quality practices created a cycle of continuous improvement, transforming tools, processes, and culture, and ultimately delivering organisational change that achieved what had previously been considered impossible.
This talk shares how we introduced modern quality engineering into a legacy environment and in doing so reduced our lead time to deployment by 480 hours while also dramatically improving the developer experience. We’ll break down the technical, cultural, and procedural shifts that enabled faster feedback loops, more reliable deployments, and higher team confidence. From early test-automation efforts and the introduction of ephemeral environments, to standardising deployments and gradually replacing brittle manual steps, this is a practical, honest account of how meaningful change actually happens. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of what quality engineering really looks like in practice, how to introduce it sustainably, and what timescales to expect when pursuing long-term ROI and organisational transformation.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
Background
- State of things when we started
- Issues this caused
First steps
- Introducing test automation to create faster feedback loops
- How we prioritised out test creation and determined what was the most valuable.
Unlocking deployments
- Introducing tooling and processes that standardised and automated deployments.
- Enabled more people to be involved, understand, and contribute to improving our processes.
Shifting left
- Improving development ways of working that enabled more testing, more often, and earlier in the process.
- Introducing ephemeral test environments
- What they are, how they work, and how they improved testing
Trust takes time
- A pause in discussing the improvements to focus on why its importnant to iterate slowly over time and build confidence gradually when making significant changes to processes and ways of working
Replacing manual with automated
- How automating those final manual steps allowed all the gradual improvements to come together
Summary
- Where did we end up
- What did we learn?
- How long did it take?
Key takeaways
- Explain what modern quality engineering looks like in practice, beyond traditional QA, and identify where to start in their own teams.
- Prioritise the right early investments (automation, feedback loops, workflow changes) to generate momentum and visible value.
- Design sustainable improvements using iterative change, gradual trust-building, and appropriate timescales for organisational ROI.
- Apply practical techniques for introducing test automation, standardising deployments, and using ephemeral environments to accelerate delivery.
- Recognise the cultural, technical, and process shifts needed to reduce lead time and improve developer experience across an organisation.
