Arnika Hryszko

President of Polish Testing Board

Join my presentation on: From Gatekeeper to Enabler: Evolving the QA Role in Modern Development

The traditional image of QA as the “quality police” guarding the gates before production is outdated, yet many teams still operate this way. In modern agile and DevOps environments, this gatekeeper mentality creates bottlenecks, slows delivery, and ironically, can reduce overall quality.


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Who is Arnika Hryszko?

President of Polish Testing Board

A passionate advocate for quality in every aspect. Test leader at Volvo Group and President of Polish Testing Board. An organizer, participant, and speaker at numerous conferences. With extensive experience as a tester and test manager, she is deeply committed to promoting best practices in software testing. In her free time, an avid reader and traveler.

What will Arnika Hryszko be discussing?

From Gatekeeper to Enabler: Evolving the QA Role in Modern Development

The traditional image of QA as the “quality police” guarding the gates before production is outdated, yet many teams still operate this way. In modern agile and DevOps environments, this gatekeeper mentality creates bottlenecks, slows delivery, and ironically, can reduce overall quality.
This session explores the fundamental shift from QA as a control point to QA as an enabler of fast, confident releases. We’ll examine what this transformation looks like in practice: how testers become quality coaches who empower developers to own testing, how test managers create guardrails instead of gates, and how QA teams build the infrastructure and knowledge that allows everyone to move faster without breaking things.
 
Drawing from real transformation experiences, we’ll discuss the challenges of letting go, both the psychological shift for QA professionals and the practical concerns about maintaining quality standards. You’ll learn strategies for building developer testing capabilities, implementing quality guardrails through automation and observability, and measuring success beyond “bugs found.”
We’ll also address common pitfalls: how to avoid becoming invisible when you’re no longer the final checkpoint, maintaining your team’s value and identity during this evolution, and knowing when gatekeeping is still necessary.
 
Target Audience: QA managers, test leads, QA engineers, and development managers navigating the evolution of testing practices.

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