Rocket fuel or AI slop: 25 years of test management meets AI
After 25 years working in testing and leading quality across large programmes, I wanted to know how AI would actually impact my job. Would it replace or improve me? Or simply create noise for me to clean up later?
Embarking on a core banking replacement, this talk shares what happened from onboarding and planning through to scoping, analysis, traceability, stakeholder communication and delivery. I'll show where AI genuinely put rocket fuel into my work, where it quietly produced AI slop, and how I learned to tell the difference. And what it can't replace: experience, judgement, relationships, and the people's engagement.
Who is this talk for?
Leaders in ICT, Project Managers, Test Managers.
What will attendees take away?
A practical way to recognise the difference between AI genuinely accelerating delivery and AI slop that creates risk, confusion, or rework.
Real examples of where AI helped across onboarding, planning, scoping, analysis, traceability, and stakeholder communication, and where human judgement remained critical.
How to use AI to reduce the administrative overhead of delivery while increasing the leadership, relationships, and critical thinking that quality depends on.
Sarah Thomas
She/Her
Quality Consultant
@ Planit Testing
Sarah Thomas has spent 25 years asking the questions others avoid. A Principal Consultant at Planit and proud wahine toa, she has led testing and quality engineering across some of New Zealand and Australia’s most complex transformation programmes.
She believes experience matters, people matter more, and “we’ve always done it this way” is never enough. Now she’s putting AI through its paces, separating genuinely useful innovation from shiny tools that create more work than value.