Since the inception of load testing, the approach has been mostly the same: simulate the traffic of an application by creating load at the API level. But there have been market shifts that make load testing with browser-level users more feasible—allowing us to test with real load and measure true user performance.

Just as debt can be good and bad in everyday life (such as a home mortgage), debt in the engineering world can also be good and bad. This applies to quality engineering as well—with good and bad test debt. As testers, how do we create a balance and stay at the right test-debt quotient?

With a week full of sessions, tutorials, training classes, and events, the STARWEST software testing conference had plenty of takeaways useful for your professional and personal life. Here are four lessons distilled from the conference’s keynote presentations on testing, communication, and directing your career.