Episode 10 - Early QA, Preview Environments, and Demo Days with James Sansbury
James Sansbury, Director of Product for Tugboat QA, shares his journey into the QA space and the challenges of implementing automated testing. He emphasizes the importance of a testing culture and the need to think about testing in the early phases of a project. He also discusses the best placement of automated testing in the pipeline and the importance of making engineering decisions based on the context of the project. The conversation discusses the benefits of using preview environments for manual testing in B2B software development. It highlights the higher stakes in B2B software and the importance of catching issues early to save costs. The practice of asynchronous manual testing in preview environments is recommended to improve quality and agility. The concept of a 'dumpster fire demo day' is introduced, emphasizing the negative impact of last-minute issues on releases. The conversation concludes by emphasizing the value of distributing QA and stakeholder sign-off throughout the development process