blog series: QA Reimagined: Navigating Agile, AI, and Automation Part 2

Foundations First: What Still Matters in Modern QA

In my previous post, I shared how the world around us has shifted — rapidly and profoundly. As QA professionals, we’re not just dealing with more tools and buzzwords; we’re navigating an entirely new way of thinking, building, and collaborating.

But amid all the noise — AI, LLMs, automation agents, DevOps, and daily deploys — I keep coming back to a core belief: no tool or technique will make a lasting impact unless it’s built on the right foundations.

So before we dive deeper into what’s new, we need to acknowledge what’s still true.

This post is about that. It’s about the timeless principles that still shape great QA work — the ones I’ve seen hold up whether I’m working with a lean product team, scaling across squads, or coaching in complex regulated environments.

These are the fundamentals that allow us to evolve without losing our edge.

1. Testing Isn’t a Phase — It’s a Thought Process

Modern QA starts long before the first test case. It begins when:

• A requirement sparks a “what if?” scenario
• An edge case pops into your head during backlog grooming
• Someone wonders, “Will this fail silently in production?”

Testing is thinking — not typing.

In the strongest teams, quality shows up in how stories are written, how code is reviewed, and how assumptions are challenged. The earlier that QA mindset enters the conversation, the more resilient the outcome.

Testing is not a gate. It’s how we build things that last.

2. The Testing Pyramid Still Holds Up

Yes, it’s been drawn a thousand times. But it still helps guide the right strategy.

I shared this post quite a few years ago, most of which is still relevant today:

A balanced pyramid is more than just a theory — it’s the difference between:

• A 10-minute pipeline vs. a 90-minute bottleneck
• Test failures that isolate root cause vs. long triage sessions
• Agile delivery vs. sprint rollovers

Anti-Patterns I Still See:

• UI-Heavy Suites that break on every small DOM shift
• Neglected Unit Tests, relying solely on manual regression
• Orphaned API Tests with no clear ownership

The shape of your pyramid tells the story of your test strategy maturity.

3. Shift-Left Is More Than Early Testing

Too often, I hear “shift-left” used as a buzzword. But it’s not about just writing tests earlier — it’s about thinking about quality earlier.

What real shift-left looks like:

• QA helping define acceptance criteria before a story starts
• Developers asking, “What’s the edge case here?” as they code
• Testability being discussed in design reviews — not after launch

It’s collaboration, not redistribution.

Shift-left doesn’t mean everyone writes tests. It means everyone thinks in terms of quality.

4. Quality Is a Team Mindset

In high-performing teams, I’ve noticed something simple but powerful:

Everyone owns quality.

Not just QA. Not just automation engineers. Everyone.

• Devs review test coverage with care.
• Product managers flag risky areas for extra validation.
• Designers loop the team into UX and accessibility checks.
• QA coaches — not commands.

And when bugs happen (because they always do), the response isn’t finger-pointing. It’s:

“What did we miss — and how do we prevent it next time?”

That’s what a real quality culture looks like.

5. Risk-Based Testing: The Underrated Superpower

You can’t test everything — and you shouldn’t try to.

The teams that scale testing sustainably know this:

• They identify business-critical flows and tag them as such
• They design test plans that evolve with risk — not with gut feel
• They know when not to automate

What this looks like practically:

• Selectively running critical tests on every commit, full suite nightly
• Layering exploratory testing for features with ambiguous UX

Risk isn’t a blocker — it’s your compass

Closing Thoughts: Tools Change, Mindset Endures

Before we get into the tactical parts of automation, AI inspired QA, and smarter pipelines, it’s worth asking:
Is our QA practice designed for speed — or built for confidence?

Foundational thinking — like collaboration, thoughtful layering, and risk-based decisions — helps you adapt to any tech shift.

Without it, even the best tools will give you the wrong kind of confidence.

Coming Next:

Test Automation in Agile: Building for Speed, Feedback, and Maintainability
Where we go deeper into how QA automation evolves in modern pipelines — and how to avoid turning it into just another fragile layer.