MAIN TRACK TALK

When Visions Collide: Lessons from a Cross-Border Testing Challenge

What happens when two parties, each with strong opinions, must work together to deliver a critical system? Add evolving technology, security demands, and the pressure of continuous delivery, and you have a recipe for complexity.

As a consultant, Ard was asked to step in and align a Dutch organisation and its foreign supplier on a common testing approach. The goal? Ensure that essential facilities in the Netherlands remain up to standard. Sounds straightforward – until you realize the two sides have very different ideas about what ‘quality’ means. The supplier’s view was simple: ‘We have requirements. If there’s a test case for each requirement, we’re done.’ But the users wanted more than a checklist—they needed proof the system would actually solve their problem. Two visions, one project, and a lot at stake.

And then came the technical challenges:

· A modular architecture introducing new algorithms and dependencies

· High-security infrastructure requirements

·New test tooling and automation strategies

·A CI/CD pipeline designed for speed, but demanding rigorous quality checks

Ard’s role was to bring these worlds together. That raised tough questions:

·What does ‘testing’ really mean for both sides?

· Is it unusual to ask for an end-to-end demo to prove the system works?

· How do we share responsibility for delivering a working solution?

· How do we test new technologies securely when you’re the first adopter?

In this talk, Ard’ll share how they tackled these challenges—through collaboration, change management, and practical strategies for introducing new technology without compromising quality. Expect real-world stories about aligning visions, managing risk, and making sense of tech in a complex, cross-border environment.

What you’ll learn

Session details

Ard Kramer

Ard is a software tester from the Netherlands and he works at OrangeCrest. He calls himself a Qualisopher which stands for someone “who loves truth and wisdom and at the same time is decisive to improve man and his environment” . This means he is interested in the world around us, to see what he can learn and he can apply in software testing. His dream is to participate, as a good qualisopher, in all kind of projects such as sports, culture or software testing.