How Scrum Killed Exploratory Testing

How Scrum Killed Exploratory Testing

Agile promised us a world focused on individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Instead, we got the commercialized rigor of Scrum - a system that often prioritizes sprint velocity over deep engineering thought.In this essay, I’m talking about the silent death of exploratory testing inside modern dev teams. We’ll break down why the relentless pressure of the 2-week sprint transforms creative QA engineers into brainless ticket closers, why your Scrum Master might be accidentally killing your product quality, and how to reclaim your critical thinking in a feature factory. 📺 Prefer the visual version? Watch this episode onYouTube: https://youtu.be/PNayG_3aEbQ [https://youtu.be/PNayG_3aEbQ] 🤝 Join the discussion and connect with me onLinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/]

The Scapegoat Industry: The Brutal Truth About QA

Every tech company claims that "quality is their top priority." It’s a great marketing slogan, but in the real world of software engineering, it's a complete illusion.In this video essay, I’m exploring the uncomfortable reality of the software industry: why companies don't actually care about perfect software, and why QA teams are often hired as liability shields rather than quality optimizers.If you’ve ever felt frustrated that your critical bug reports were ignored to hit a deadline, or that your automation suite is treated as a bottleneck rather than an asset - this episode is for you. Let's talk about professional detachment and how to survive the corporate feature factory without burning out. 📺 Prefer the visual version? Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/KS51R_pefHo [https://youtu.be/KS51R_pefHo] 🤝 Join the discussion and connect with me onLinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/]

Test Automation is Dead. And We Have Killed It.

Nietzsche once said that God is dead. In 2026, I look at our CI/CD pipelines, our flaky tests, and our bloated frameworks, and I can't help but feel the same way about Automation. It’s dead. And we are its murderers.For years, the industry has sold us a lie: that coding is the highest form of testing. We rushed to master syntax, locators, and infrastructure, but in the process, we lost the very thing that made us testers in the first place - our hunter’s instinct. We’ve traded critical thinking for a maintenance manual, becoming operators of complex machines that are perfectly tuned to look at the world through a keyhole while the rest of the building is on fire.In this essay, I’m breaking down the "Automation Delusion" and why the technocratic definition of seniority is a dead end. If your only value is translating a manual step into a line of code, AI is already faster than you. It’s time to stop apologizing for "just testing" and return to the core of our profession. 📺 Prefer the visual version? Watch this episode onYouTube: https://youtu.be/NJsYu6tTNHw [https://youtu.be/NJsYu6tTNHw] 🤝 Join the discussion and connect with me onLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/]

Why Your UI Tests Take Forever (And How To Fix It)

Are your automated tests taking hours to run? Do they fail randomly because of a UI change on the homepage? In this episode, we tackle the #1 architectural mistake junior Test Automation Engineers make: using the UI to set up test data. Learn why mirroring manual testing steps in your code creates a massive bottleneck, how false negatives destroy trust in your framework, and how you can use API requests to inject session tokens and make your UI tests 10x faster and more reliable. 📺 Prefer the visual version? Watch this episode onYouTube: https://youtu.be/GEpjApads_c [https://youtu.be/GEpjApads_c] 🤝 Join the discussion and connect with me onLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/]

You Don't Need a QA Portfolio

Every bootcamp tells you to build a massive test automation portfolio on GitHub to get hired. Here is the reality check: hiring managers do not have the time to clone your repository, install your dependencies, and review your code. In this video, we debunk the portfolio myth. Learn why copying tutorial frameworks will not make you stand out, and how you should actually use your personal projects to practice for technical interviews. 📺 Prefer the visual version? Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/g7Sse7YjAhg 🤝 Join the discussion and connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ciepielewski/