Reimagining Automation
2025-05-21 , Main Stage

Let’s face it: test automation is hard. Teams across the industry continue to struggle with the same old problems again and again: flaky tests, poor coverage, and never enough time to develop automation. While many teams have reached success, many others feel left behind.

It’s time to rethink how we approach testing and automation. Instead of building automated test suites that merely repeat hard-coded presuppositions, what if we built autonomous tools that could learn our products dynamically and point out changes during development? Any time we make a change to the code, we could run these tools to find out if the actual changes in behavior meet our expectations or cause bugs.

In this talk, we will learn what autonomous testing is and how it will make testing truly Agile. Although we don’t have fully autonomous tools available yet, we will learn how we can start building them today. Autonomous testing could help resolve so many frustrating parts of testing. Let’s build that future together!


Elevator Pitch:

Let’s face it: automation is hard. Much automation has focused on test cases or build pipelines. What if we could make our other processes autonomous? Let's build that future!

Andrew Knight, also known as “Pandy,” is the Automation Panda. He’s a software quality champion who loves to help people build better quality software. Currently, he works as the Senior Director of Product Management at Cycle Labs, focusing on building an excellent test automation platform for enterprise systems. Previously, Pandy spent a decade as a SDET building solutions to testing problems at various tech companies. He also previously led Developer Relations and Test Automation University at Applitools. As an avid supporter of open source software, Pandy is a Playwright Ambassador as well as the lead developer for Boa Constrictor, the .NET Screenplay Pattern. On the side, he is writing a book on software testing with Manning Publications. Apart from software, Pandy spends time with his family, his French Bulldog, and his vintage Volkswagens. Check out his tech blog at AutomationPanda.com, and follow him on Twitter at @AutomationPanda.