Manawatu Test Professionals Meetup | June 2025

It takes a village to raise a child…..

And a community to support a Software Quality Assurance Professional.

Our most recent Manawatu Software Quality Assurance Professionals meetup stepped into new territory, our topic casting ahead into the future for what the major organisation software quality assurance functions will be focusing on – and what that means for the local quality assurance professional community. Hosted again by the fantastic supportive team from FMG, our meetup featured presentations from FMG, Massey University and Enable New Zealand. Illness and scheduling constraints prevented an overview of Quality Assurance practices from Toyota New Zealand who have been a regular contributor in the past. And we were lucky to have a quick off the cuff overview from Tourism Holdings New Zealand. Featuring all of the local major organisations with quality assurance functions that are supportive of the local software quality assurance community, we count ourselves as luck to have this very supportive group of companies in the Manawatu area.

Our event brief and call to action ahead of the meetup was simple:

Hey all. Our next meetup is again being hosted by the very supportive team at FMG. This time we are stepping it up big time – asking the major players in the Testing Domain within Palmerston North to give us an overview and a preview of their Test Practice Roadmap for the next year. It will be a great opportunity for testing practices across the community to see what each has planned by way of test practice development and maturity. And for those in the testing industry to see what skills, techniques and technologies they should focus on for ongoing career development. Something for everyone and a good few takeaways on offer.

Suggested by Helen from FMG, with such a strongly supportive and cohesive community this topic presented an opportunity for organisations to swap notes on their Software Quality Assurance Practice plans, leverage common areas and explore key differences (asking the ‘why’). For the Quality Assurance Professional community as a whole it also represented an opportunity to see where the direction of the more significant Quality Assurance practices in the local area is heading – for example:

• Is Test Automation still a priority?
• What is the current tooling (test automation, test management, defect management) focus – now and into the future?
• What are the quality assurance methods being implemented (BDD, TDD, Lean Testing)?
• What is the current and projected role of AI?
• Are the local quality assurance practices looking to grow, shrink or be stable?
• What are the common platforms that are being used across the local organisations that will require quality assurance oversight?

With each of the presenters being available before and after the presentations for one on one and small group conversations over drinks and nibbles, the meetup also supported the opportunity for smaller, targeted questions and discussions on these questions and more.

Each of the presented slide decks is attached to this blog post. What stood out for me personally in listening to each presenter was the level of commonality across their individual quality assurance practice visions:

• There is a strong sense of consolidation of current quality assurance practices across the organisations. All have been through some significant change (either organisational change, technology change or personnel / team structure change) so the focus was on bedding in the changes as opposed to major changes in direction, technology or ways of working.
• AI, while a feature that is being closely watched, is still in the ‘research and evaluate’ stage for quality assurance. FMG as an example is making good use of AI through the business. AI has not quite yet made it to the production implementation stage with Quality Assurance across the community, although with some organisations actively investing in AI research, this could change over the next six months. And could well be introduced as a byproduct of tooling and technology supplier feature enhancements to currently used products.
• Technology and tooling is stable with all organisations planning to further invest in what they currently have. Major tooling and technology decisions have already been made and are not scheduled to be changed in the foreseeable future.
• No major team changes are planned. Organisations have made decisions on team size and structure. The focus is on bedding in what has been decided to date.
• With many vendors supplying platform software (including customisations and configurations), most of the quality assurance practice activities are focused on verifying that the vendor changes have been applied correctly, integrations with other products that the organisations are working with to deliver cire business processes and managing the efficient setup and delivery of user acceptance and business acceptance testing.

The current release cadence of Tourism Holdings New Zealand of 4x per day generated a lot of discussion and looks to be one of the most immediate follow up between the local organisations out of the meetup.

What does this mean for the local quality assurance community? My insights were:

• Their existing investment in their own personal development and technical training is safe and current. No major changes are needed to their current technical skills and training.
• Now is the right time to invest in learning and understanding the potential of AI on software quality assurance. This is both in the form of understanding the use of generic AI in the software quality assurance domain as well as staying current with tooling vendor initiatives in introducing AI into their products.
• Quality assurance teams are generally stable with limited movement in size. Employment opportunities will be through team churn and not team growth.
• Experience with integration testing, user acceptance and business acceptance test management and mentoring is key.
• Hybrid testing experience, covering both test automation and manual testing is useful and valued by those managing Quality Assurance teams.

Presentations from each of the organisations listed are available here:

• FMG <FMG FY2526 Roadmap Presentation>
• Massey University <Massey University Test Practice Road Map>
• Enable New Zealand <Enable New Zealand Test practice focus Presentation>