Talks · Free

Conference decks and the stories behind them.

Talks we have given at industry conferences, founder forums, and client events. Each page has the slides, the abstract, and the case studies the talk is built on.

Talks
11
Format
Slides + framing
TalkApril 2026

AI + agents in small business.

What changed, what works, what breaks.

A field guide to AI and agents for non-technical veterans and early-stage founders. Delivered at the STRIVE Forum in April 2026. Slides, takeaways, and the two case studies behind the talk.

STRIVE Forum60 min
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Talk

Investing in software testing.

The ROI case and how to earn it.

Software testing is an investment. The wrong tests return zero — or worse, a false sense of security. The right tests, selected against customer usage profiles and weighted by quality risk, can cut customer-found defects by two-thirds and return roughly four dollars for every dollar spent. This talk walks through the baseline, the math, and the program that makes the numbers real.

Rex Black, Inc.50 min
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Talk

Four ways testing adds value.

Bugs fixed, bugs found, risks mitigated, projects guided.

A smart test group can add measurable value in four ways, not one: by finding bugs that get fixed (or are prevented entirely), by finding bugs that don't get fixed but are documented and worked around, by mitigating expensive quality risks like insurance does, and by providing credible information that guides the project to success. This talk walks through each of the four with real numbers, building up from the ROI calculation in "Investing in Software Testing" into a composite case that — in the worked example — lands at 738% ROI.

Rex Black, Inc.50 min
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Talk

Towards true engineering.

Moving software beyond craft to profession.

Software is practiced more like a craft than a form of engineering — reliant on skill, apprenticeship, and process; short on materials with known properties, mathematics that predicts behavior, modeling that stress-tests designs, and meaningful standards. The history of mechanical, civil, and aeronautical engineering shows the path forward: it's neither quick nor optional. This talk is the argument for taking that path deliberately, and what it means for software testing in particular.

Rex Black, Inc.40 min
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Talk

The fine art of writing a good bug report.

Ten tips that turn sloppy notes into a document developers will act on.

A bug report is a technical document — the only tangible product of testing. This talk walks through the ten tips Rex Black teaches every test team, anchored by a single worked example that evolves from a one-line rant into a clear, neutral, reproducible defect report that management can read and developers can fix.

Quality Week, San Francisco45 min
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Talk

Risk-based testing.

What it is, why it works, and a CA pilot that proves it.

Out of the infinite cloud of possible tests, a test team runs a finite number. Risk-based testing decides which ones — in what order, with how much effort, and how to cut when the schedule compresses. This webinar walks through the method, the four benefits, and a six-step pilot at CA that shipped 92 risk items, an adjusted RPN histogram, and a re-allocated test effort that changed how the project shipped.

Rex Black, Inc. webinar60 min
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Talk

Charting the progress of system development.

Five bug-data charts every test lead should run every week.

Bug data is the most honest project dashboard you will ever build. Five simple charts — cumulative opened vs. closed, closure period, daily vs. rolling, root-cause breakdown, subsystem breakdown — give you a crisp read on product stability, developer responsiveness, and where the project is going sideways. This talk is the method, the SpeedyWriter worked example, and the interpretive patterns you'll see in real data.

International Software Quality Week, San Francisco45 min
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Talk

Managing complex test environments.

A logistics problem, not a spreadsheet problem.

Some bugs only reveal themselves in field-like conditions: server crashes under load, data corruption under concurrent write, regressions that hit only on a specific OS/driver/firmware stack, AI model drift that hits only on a specific dataset version. That means the test environment itself becomes complex enough to need its own system of record — hardware, software, configurations, people, locations, schedules, and the relationships between all of them. This talk is the framework for building and running that system of record, so your test coverage against complex systems stops being accidental.

Rex Black, Inc.60 min
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Talk

Shoestring manual testing.

When you can't afford automation, yet.

You don't always have the budget, the tools, the headcount, or the stable system under test that test automation needs. This talk is the playbook for the other case — a disciplined manual testing program built around cheap technicians, fast training, and a business case any manager will fund. The goal is not "manual forever." The goal is enough signal to ship safely while the product is stabilizing.

Rex Black, Inc.40 min
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Talk

Create your own luck.

The four organizational factors that decide whether a test team succeeds.

Most testing success is mistaken for luck — a cooperative dev team, an early engagement, shared tools. It isn't luck. It's four organizational factors you can engineer into almost any project. This talk names them, shows the good and bad versions of each from real engagements, and gives test leads a plan to move their next project from one to the other.

Industry conference keynote45 min
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Talk

Five trends affecting software testing.

What the AI era is doing to the QA profession.

AI-generated code, platform engineering, expanded software liability, supply-chain risk, and continuous quality are the five macro-forces reshaping software testing right now. This talk names each, explains the threat to the legacy testing profession, and maps the specific skills and practices the next generation of test engineers has to build. It's the 2026 successor to a trend-forecasting talk first given in the early 2000s — the five calls made then (globalization, test automation, commoditization, compliance, certification) all played out. These five are the next round.

Rex Black, Inc.45 min
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