Quality moments and delicate developer dialogues - Ep 127

In this episode of This Week in Quality (Friday 13 March 2026), Simon Tomes is joined by co-host Demi Van Malcot, and the pair kick off with an unexpected theme: demos that actually go right. Demi shares the rare joy of a full, 20-minute end-to-end demo where nothing broke, and Heleen later echoes the streak with her own successful demo, helped by a hard-won team rule: no last-minute database cleanups or changes before showcasing work.

Simon and Demi also spotlight what’s new in the MoTaverse, starting with Moments, the feature that merges the old memories and memes into a richer, blog-like format with improved formatting options. They call out community Moments from International Women’s Day, including Rosie’s reflection on “brag books” and Cassandra Lung’s ideas on making achievements visible. Demi shares a standout takeaway from Into the MoTaverse with Natalia: build confidence by doing hard things, then keep doing them until your “hard thing” becomes normal. The theme ties neatly into Chris Pratt’s reminder that getting started is often the hardest part, especially when sharing publicly.

When the community joins the stage, the conversation turns practical. Judy shares how, as the only QA on her team, she pushed for faster feedback loops by asking developers to run a lightweight risk-storming style check before handing work to QA. The result: fewer surprise bugs, smoother demos, and a cultural win worth celebrating publicly. Heleen and Demi add reflections on how hard it can be to be the voice of quality when you’re outnumbered, and how progress often starts with asking clearly for what you need, then reinforcing improvements with visible appreciation.

The episode closes with a fresh idea from Simon: a new AMA format on the MoTaverse, reframed as Ask Multiverse Anything. The concept invites members to post an AMA as a Moment, gather questions in comments, and then publish one Moment per answer, creating a searchable trail of community knowledge and reusable learning content. As the chat debates whether quality folks are “assumption journalists” or “assumption detectives,” the group lands on a shared truth: a big part of quality work is spotting assumptions, naming them, and turning them into better conversations.