A significant part of remaining relevant in the software industry is keeping up with development and testing trends. But organizations don’t always have a big training budget, so sometimes it falls to us to manage our own continuing education. Luckily, that can be as easy as discovering fresh ideas in a new book.

With increasingly complex and sophisticated technologies being used in testing, quality has to become a smart activity. A smart QA strategy is both about building smart models and making smart choices. We must keep in mind the balance between manual and automated solutions and which are needed to accomplish our goals.

With a week full of sessions, tutorials, training classes, and events, the Agile + DevOps East software conference had plenty of takeaways. Here are four highlights, including discussions about agile estimation, finding your ideal job, some challenges to advancing test automation, and leading self-organizing teams.