Test Engineering

MAIN TRACK TALK

From Flaky Pipelines to Strategic Business Driver: A 2+ Year Journey of Continuous Marginal Gains

Test engineering has traditionally been relegated to a cost center role, with up to 60% of development teams routinely skipping automated tests due to reliability issues. This transformation story spans a challenging 2+ year journey where what began as fixing one testing layer grew into comprehensive organisational change touching test architecture, cultural mindset, and automation landscape. Small, continuous improvements from framework to ownership models to automation bots compounded over time, demonstrating how testing can evolve from organisational burden into measurable competitive advantage across multiple product teams.

In this talk you will explore how the philosophy of marginal gains transformed a flaky test pipeline into a strategic business driver. First, attendees will see the initial challenges: unreliable tests, developer disruption. Next, the talk dissects five key dimensions of change: test architecture, organisational training, democratisation of testing, cultural ownership models, data-driven transparency via dashboards and automation bots that eliminate manual friction. Concrete case study from framework selection trade-offs to P0 e2e integration to the latest “analyze-changes” workflows and ROI calculations that will illustrate quantifiable impact.

What you’ll learn

A practical, step-by-step framework for embedding continuous marginal gains across any engineering organisation It also emphasises leveraging data-driven transparency and ownership models - with dashboards, clear SLAs, and accountability frameworks to transform testing culture and eliminate flakiness Demonstrates concrete ROI by quantifying time savings, efficiency gains, risk reduction and improving developer/tester experience to reframe test engineering as a strategic profit driver

Session details

Track 2

16:30h - 17:15h · May 27th

40 mins + 5 mins Q&A

Test Engineering

Advanced Level

Talk in English, translated to Spanish

Sharath Byregowda

Sharath Byregowda, Director, TE at Collibra, with over two decades of experience in software development leadership and testing. His forte lies in grasping context and crafting bespoke strategies, always striving to improve through learning from both successes and setbacks. He’s a firm believer in continuous refinement and experimentation, with agile and lean principles as his guiding stars. Sharath dedicated to coaching and mentoring, which has helped build strong teams and deliver successful projects. His aim is to foster a culture of learning and drive initiatives, always looking for ways to make a real difference in how we develop software.

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